Guild Wars 2

Could the first swing have a 1-second cripple?

Please? It’s almost embarassing that enemies can literally just run away and there’s not much we can do without spending a utility slot.

My Sweet Lily.1952:

What’s bothering me with the medium chest armor is the belt bug. If you wear any boots other than the legendary ones, the bone belt on the waist doesn’t disappear. Wearing legendary boots fixes the bug. This ruins any kind of fashion wars if you don’t want to wear the legendary boots.

That’s the only thing bothering you about medium chest armor? :p

Why is Kasmeer’s outfit prettier than all 3 legendaries? Which took 2 years to develop?

It would almost make me lol if it wasn’t so sad.

People need to realize that the point of legendary armor isn’t to win fashion contests.

Except the whole point of the endgame is to acquire new skins. Why bother if you don’t want to wear them because they’re so bad?

Nate.8146:

2 legendaries man? I’m still recovering from my predator I crafted 2 years ago! If I had to get a 2nd one though, then I’d either get Shooshadoo and look badkitten strolling around WvW with a fishtank on my back, or get the HMS Divinity and join up with a fleet to unleash cannongeddon.

Right now I have:

Quip
HOPE
The Juggernaut
The Predator
Ad Infinitum

I want to get:

The Flameseeker Prophecies

Alga.6498:

Why are the commander always like ‘’ [i]let’s kill everything in our way, even if it’s our own gods[/i] ’’ !?
It make sense if the commander was Charr, Norn, Sylvari or Asura, but Human?!

Humans and the Six gods are something special, something they’re praying and granted blessings from.
Just because the kitten commander and the little annoying Taimi kitten has a theory that Balthazar will take over the world bla bla bla….
It’s one of OUR gods. We just can’t kill our god who has been a blessing for the humans for over 250 years and even more! (GW1~ years aswell)

Just imagine if Jesus Christ or Buddha would come to our world and then we must kill them because we BELIEVE that they are evil?
No but for real….

I am a huge fan of the Six gods, as my favorite race is human and their lore. I just hate how lazy ANet turn something like … oh I don’t know, a GOD to evil just like that and we have to kill them!?

I simply don’t get it. As the commander (in my case, my ‘main’ character is a human) shouldn’t even consider to kill one of our god just like that!!

I was excepting the human characters would be more how Kasmeer reacted when we revealed Lazarus’ imposter’s identity.
Atleast that would make sense!
They are our gods, not a kitten dragon or something we simply need to kill just like that and then happy endings. >_<

If the 2nd Expansion will give us more lore and meeting the rest of the Six gods, I hope the human characters will have their special and unique way, being affected by the influence of the Gods’ return to Tyria, just like Sylvari characters had in the 1st Expansion.

I suspect the episode 6 “reveal” of the next expac will show that Balthazar was not really being evil, just appearing to be. He did, after all, say that there was something bigger going on than Tyria. Maybe Menzies (or Dhuum, or both) is back.

My only complaint with Balthazar is that he doesn’t acknowledge if your character is human. I used the “Hounds of Balthazar” elite skill against his hounds, and he said nothing, which was a massive disappointment.

Seyiwaji.4082:

Seyiwaji.4082:

now let’s talk seriously.
If you make an Human male muscular. Look at his arms without the MEDIUM legendary armor.
Afterwards, make him wear the MEDIUM Legendary body piece and look at this arms

YOU WILL CRY…. i swear.
Cheap work.

here is a video about what i mean, with bright color it is even worser.
His arm become like silvary’s…..

https://youtu.be/v9Uyxxvulh8

this is really…. i don’t know maybe are my eyes broken. I have the feeling that the armor just replace the body. He doesn’t wear it. The body is replaced. Like copy and paste something.

Look at the shoulder of my character with and without armor…… are you serious……

I never play human males, but dang, that’s really bad. Huge mistake on their part.

flog.3485:

SeranusGaming.7362:

Just my two cents -

1. I think they all look ridiculous and no where near what I would consider, “legendary.”

2. The fact that they can only be obtained via raids is a complete betrayal of what GW2 was supposed to be – a game with multiple areas and the ability to upgrade gear based upon the area you enjoy most.

This is only relevant in terms of stats not looks. Here is an example: I can’t get the legendary fractal backpiece if I don’t invest myself in playing fractals.

Except you can play fractals for 10-20 minutes a day and eventually get the backpiece (even if it takes months).

Raiding for 10-20 minutes? Yeah, good luck getting anywhere.

Oh, I just want to add:

Balthazar should have some extra dialogue if you’re a human and use one of your racial skills. I summoned hounds of balthazar during balthazar’s fight… and it just worked normally.

Nate.8146:

Can we get a free holodancer with our holosmiths?

In my crazy mind, I want to believe that ultimate is a teleporter pad beaming your mates out. Then in addition to the expansion, Anet announces they will fix turrets by allowing you to erect a single sentry that you can upgrade with your wrench. To complete the meta, Anet bestows upon us a new “Yippee ki yaa he yay kyaaah kayo!” emote to complete the profession.

10/10, would buy the expansion twice.

Also include a nope.avi animation, and we’re golden.

If you want a purple glowing effect from Quip, use it in your offhand. Otherwise, HOPE is generally better IMO.

(I have both. I use Quip in the offhand, HOPE in the mainhand)

Positive:
- Well written
- Interesting new map concept
- I like the new mastery. Feel like Link from Zelda.

Negative
- Wait, it’s over already? 3-4 months of waiting and it’s how long?
- Legendary armor problems.
- New map has lots of confusing nooks and crannies that make it frustrating to find POIs

What a complete troll from ArenaNet. It’s not a trenchcoat… until you pull out your weapons.

If it’s a sword, that also means they will have to work on the shield to make it more viable. Or make the pistol offhand work with the sword.

Which… I don’t expect them to do.

Also: Omni-tool from Mass Effect, anyone?

What the heck ArenaNet?

Medium armor stowed looks great! Then you insult us by adding a trenchcoat as part of the animation? The animation makes the whole set look awful. Whose brilliant idea was that?

How about you make it possible to prevent the unstowing animation (excluding the dragon unstow effect) and then this armor might actually seem legendary.

https://metabattle.com/wiki/WvW

The two metas I could find for engineer in WvW:

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Scrapper_-_Quickness_Scrapper
https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Frontline_Scrapper

It looks like engineers were forgotten in the aesthetic design of this armor. I see Arah armor and whispers armor, neither of which lends themselves well to engineers.

insanemaniac.2456:

core engi is not strictly better in pve. sneak gyro is about as op as anything gets. the dps is marginally different. the huge thing scrapper gives up is perma swiftness, but mostly where sneak gyro is op is where you have other people who provide swiftness, and in the other cases where sneak is op, the dps you can sacrifice to get mobility is not an issue.

How often are you using stealth in PvE? Only time I ever use it is for the Underground Facility fractal, because stealth is kind of needed to hit that final switch. For all other cases needing momentary stealth, you can just use the bomb kit.

As for perma swiftness… that’s a matter of traits. You can either use mecha legs or streamlined kits for it, which are core traits that scrapper can access.

in addition, why would you say necros and else got screwed? reaper is practically mandatory, as is tempest. everywhere. is that what you mean, that they have to take their elite specs to compete thereby reducing build diversity?

Because look at the design philosophy behind Reaper and Tempest.

The idea for Reaper was to create a power necro (which didn’t really exist before). What they did was create a power necro that was too powerful, and then they nerfed it too hard to the point where the power necro build was weak. The reason most necros take Reaper any more is Deathly Chill, because greatsword necros really aren’t that powerful.

Tempest really didn’t have a vision or fundamentally alter elementalist play. It was more of the same. While it was technically an upgrade, it was kind of ridiculous.

That’s why those two classes (and engineers) got screwed with their elite specs. There were some slight improvements, but overall everybody else got straight upgrades.

Captain Swag.5893:

Look, I get that it’s just the highest dps that Engineer can do in a power build, but it’s so horrible, so clunky, and so not fun. Have they ever said that they intend to either rebalance or rework it at any point?

Nope.

And it should be obvious because rifle hasn’t been particularly powerful in a long time.

Yeah, spam that 6 key when you put the turret down, or you won’t get the healing bomb going.

Tomiyou.3790:

Ardid.7203:

Please also remember Scrapper WAS THE LAST ELITE SPEC TO BE RELEASED, barely giving time to beta test it, and all those TBD on the streaming interviews with the devs.
ENGIE IS ALWAYS THE LAST PRIORITY.

I bet that it is because they actually took the time to develop it. Take a look at Tempest for example. Everything is just a copy of other assets and the whole elite spec has 0 SYNERGY with the rest of the class apart from earth. Not to mention the fact that it is hella boring to play, standing around for 4-5 seconds just waiting for casts to finish.
Your post boils down to “Waah! My class has half of the abilities completely useless (which other classes have too, not just engi) and find bad excuses to complain, saying devs care more about other classes.”

Took the time to develop it? Scrapper is almost exclusively designed with PvP in mind. Core engineer is still better in PvE, period full stop. However, if you want to PvP, you need to use scrapper to be competitive. Our class is literally split between PvE and PvP, the elite spec and core specs couldn’t be more different. Every other class sees integration with their elite specs and core (some more than others, admittedly), but we see nothing. That screams to me that they didn’t bother to tune the elite specialization. They threw our spec in, everything else be kitten ed, then nerfed anything that seemed overpowered in PvP.

You know that the thread for BWE3 for HoT was pinned on this forum until a few weeks ago right? They didn’t even clean it up post launch. That was the last time we’ve seen a dev on these forums addressing any of our concerns, and that’s how little they’ve cared.

I’m not saying we’re the only ones who saw the short end of the stick with HoT. Necros got hurt pretty bad, as did elementalists. But this problem has been going on much longer than Heart of Thorns — I’ve watched engineer receive nerf after nerf ever since launch, and the “buffs” we’ve received have been completely out of touch with the reality of play. Our traits are hopelessly outdated, most of our utility skills are pointless, and we’ve been in a bad way for a much longer time than HoT.

Hell, even the fact that they STILL haven’t addressed the problem with legendary effects and kits should tell you something. That bug’s been around since launch.

EdwinLi.1284:

Honestly the only way I see Engineer to get out of its position as bottom of the barrel is for Anet to give Engineer a very good Elite Specialization that can finally remove the demand to depend on kits for 90% of the Profession’s gameplay.

As nice as kits are majority of the builds and gameplay style of Engineer has been put too much focus on the Kits instead of Engineer’s main weapon.

Part of the reason kits are so necessary to engineer builds is because our default weapons are mostly underwhelming and kits have been the only part of the engineer class that hasn’t seen too much punishment from the devs.

Ardid.7203:

Please also remember Scrapper WAS THE LAST ELITE SPEC TO BE RELEASED, barely giving time to beta test it, and all those TBD on the streaming interviews with the devs.
ENGIE IS ALWAYS THE LAST PRIORITY.

Yep. Engineer has always been the afterthought.

What about Taimi? In my opinion she definitely is an engineer.

You never actually see her in combat. It’s always Scruffy fighting for her. While it’s implied that she’s an engineer, there’s no evidence besides some dialogue options to indicate that’s the case. That’s why I left her off the list, because there’s no real concrete evidence.

She is defined as a golemancer, but many of the famous golemancers are actually caster classes, like elementalists or necros. Since the engineer profession actually emerged from the charr, there’s no distinct reason why being an asuran golemancer necessarily implies they are an engineer.

in the heat of battle hes carpet bombing you with fire grenades, bleed grenades, and stun grenades and using his shield to reflect just like an engi.

That’s in the LS1 story, only (which gets vaguely repeated in Hearts and Minds). Every fight after that, he’s acting as a warrior does. You’ll notice he’s always wielding a sword and shield (engineer can’t wield sword) and he melees in most combat. He also wears heavy armor.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Oaken_armor – His armor
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chain-Whip_Sword – His sword

Irijia.6073:

Not that I don’t agree that Engineers have been a little neglected but is Canach a warrior? Seems to me he was pretty engineer-ish with the bombs, reflective shield, and whatnot when you fought his blighted version in HoT main story. Just saying.

His skills reflect a survivalist warrior, not an engineer. That might bring him closer to a ranger, but I wouldn’t posit that he is one. He typically wields a sword and shield and reflects projectiles. His direct combat most closely mirrors a warrior.

He indirectly fights like a ranger or engineer, but in the heat of battle he is first and foremost a warrior.

Representation

Most classes are represented throughout the storyline of the game — both in personal story and the larger living world. But engineer has almost no representation showing. The only major representation engineer had was killed off pretty early, and there are none that spring to mind:

Heavy

• Warrior: Rytlock Brimstone, Canach, Warmaster Forgal Kernsson, the Vigil membership, and many smaller examples
• Guardian: Braham Eirsson, Logan Thackeray
• Revenant: Rytlock Brimstone. There is a story reason that revenant does not have more representation, however.

Medium

• Ranger: Eir Stegalkin, Rox
• Thief: Caithe, the Order of Whispers membership
• Engineer: Tybalt Leftpaw and Scarlet Briar, both of whom are dead.

Light

• Mesmer: Kasmeer, Queen Jennah, Lady Wi
• Necromancer: Trahearne, Marjory Delaqua
• Elementalist: Snaff, Zojja, Magister Sieran, The Durmand Priory membership

Misc: Taimi (We never observe her directly in combat, it’s only Scruffy. It’s implied she’s a golemancer, which is typically an elementalist)

Traits

As Wooden Potatoes recently documented, our traits are a mess. Many are designed for a meta that doesn’t exist any more, or has never existed at all. They have not been revisited in a very long time, and are in desperate need of reworking.

ArenaNet’s Behavior

Compounding the aforementioned issues is the fact that ArenaNet doesn’t seem to have a main engineer player on their balance team. Almost every balance patch we see a nerf or some sort of tradeoff. The latest patch, which saw a slight buff to engineer’s condition damage has possibly been the only good news we’ve seen in a long time.

In addition to this lack of representation from the Dev team, we also see a lack of representation from the moderating team that visits the forum. Excluding the most recent cleanup of our forum by Gaile Gray, we haven’t seen a developer or ArenaNet employee on the engineer subforum since the beta of Heart of Thorns, well over a year and a half ago.

In Conclusion

ArenaNet, I know you don’t have unlimited resources to devote. You almost always seem to focus on the warrior and design everything else from there.

But it seems like engineer is always an afterthought. We keep getting relegated to the sidelines and ignored. The class is quickly becoming irrelevant, and if major changes aren’t observed with the next few balance patches or next expansion, I may not have a reason to continue playing Guild Wars other than loyalty to the brand.

This thread was also posted on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/65a8u3/the_engineer_injustice/?st=j1ha0hot&sh=c679620b

Core Gameplay

Engineer is possibly one of the most complicated classes to play and learn, next to elementalist in terms of complexity. Previously, there were simple engineer builds that were viable, but they have gotten nerfed into oblivion, or power creeped into obscurity.

Also notable is the fact that the Scrapper, the Engineer’s current elite specialization, is the only elite specialization that seems entirely designed for PvP. All the other elite specializations commonly see use in PvE and are viable outside of PvP. The scrapper, however, is underwhelming in raids, fractals, and solo play. Most PvE builds of the engineer use exclusively core traits and skills.

Weapons

Engineer has only 2 mainhand weapons available to it, and one offhand weapon: Rifle, pistol, and shield. Scrapper adds the hammer to bring the total to 4.

Currently, we only see viable play out of pistol and scrapper (in PvE and PvP respectively). The other two weapons languish in obscurity, as kits outstrip their damage and utility. Projectile hate plays a large part of the problem as well.

Utilities

Engineer, of all the classes, actually has some of the most engaging potential play. We’ve got silly gadgets like the portable battering ram and rocket boots. We’ve got fun toys like flamethrowers and turrets. We can even switch “weapons” rapidly.

The reality, however, is that many of these “fun” skills are useless or underwhelming. For a class that has a lot of fun stuff, many of the fun skills and utilities we could use are underwhelming when compared to their practical counterparts. They have either been nerfed to oblivion or power creeped out of relevance.

Here’s two examples:

1. Personal battering ram, a completely silly but somewhat interesting gadget that does knockback. It does moderate to weak damage and sends enemies flying. The problem is that its damage was weak when Guild Wars launched, and has only gotten weaker since. On top of that, the Flamethrower 3 skill (air blast) has the same effect, a lower cooldown, and more potential DPS.
2. Turrets were, for a time, the meta engineer build. They became as ubiquitous as the tank eles we see today for their ability to bunker. Because the vocal opposition became loud enough, both turret damage and health were nerfed into oblivion. They became even weaker with HoT’s release, which saw more AoE skills introduced. Turrets were literally a selling point of the engineer, and are pointless now.

Hi everybody!

I wanted to start a post documenting the longstanding issues with the class. I’m bored and I feel like ranting about something, and this has been bothering me for a while.

I’ve mained engineer since the launch of GW2 — and even in the betas before GW2 officially launched. I’ve put in close to 3000 hours with engineer alone. I even have pictures!

http://i.imgur.com/1JAr7Vp.jpg — My character when I first started playing in the early access beta weekends. Yes, she is jumping while sitting (a fun glitch in the beta)
http://i.imgur.com/3vu37ha.jpg — My character now

Inb4 cry moar

Preface

I’m starting this thread with the intention of documenting the longstanding injustice against engineers committed by ArenaNet over the length of the class. This thread will start with the general issues, and narrow down to the specifics.

The Class Origin

The engineer class is perhaps the only class I know of unique to Guild Wars 2 — with revenant and mesmer coming in a close second. Most MMOs do not have an analogue to the engineer. This is a good thing. Hell, this is a great thing.

But there’s a problem. The class started partly as a joke. The commando, while not responsible for the origin of the engineer (the idea started earlier than that) did play a large role in some of the skills we see today — in particular grenade kit, mortar kit, and orbital strike.

The class was also an afterthought — it was the last of the original 8 to be made, as documented in this interview.

Jon P: I wouldn’t say they were assured, but some were more likely. The ranger was on the fence as we split it into two things, and those merged back together. When we had twelve professions there was actually no ranger, but when we went back down to seven, the ranger came back. The reason I keep referring to seven professions is because for a while we thought that was going to be the final number. The reason why we went to eight was because the engineer was not part of the final seven.

Aesthetics

• Armor

Engineer was originally slated to be a heavy armor class, and was later changed to a medium armor class. This noticeably affected the armor styles available to the engineer in the early game, and even to this day. In fact, there was very little armor that was clearly designed for an engineer before it was added later via the gem store. Most of the medium armor present in the game is clearly designed for rangers and thieves, with little thought given to engineers.

Today, we still don’t see much in the way of armor design for engineer. The new outfits and gemstore armors don’t fit an engineer’s aesthetic. Minor nods have been given to us, such as Magitech armor and the Gas Mask, but by and large we don’t see much armor design given to engineers.

And this shows. The new “legendary” armor precursors hint at what the finished product will look like. While the Envoy armor doesn’t really fit any of the three medium classes (looks more fit for a necro), it REALLY doesn’t fit an engineer.

• Weapons

We also didn’t see weapons designed with engineers in mind. Notably, the first rifle and pistol legendaries were clearly designed for warriors and thieves respectively. The Predator is a sniper rifle — but the engineer’s attacks fire from the hip. Quip is a troll/joke weapon and clearly fits the thief’s aesthetic more than the engineer’s.

Throughout Guild Wars’ Living Stories, when new weapon skins were added, they typically didn’t include pistol or rifle, the engineer’s only weapons pre-HoT. The notable exceptions are the Aetherblade weapons and arguably HOPE.

Speaking of which! Our weapon kits don’t display legendary weapon effects and aren’t visually customizable. Every engineer has the same flamethrower, the same bomb kit, etc. Why are we the only class that gets screwed visually?

That looks like a bugged shock shield — similar to how mesmer/guardian skills can bug out and remain permanently visible.

Had a ranked match in Khylo. A bizarre series of bugs sprouted up, causing the loss:

• First a guardian pulls me into a wall with Spear of Justice. I get stuck inside said wall.
• I type /stuck because I can’t /gg. Game says I will be teleported in 30 secs of inactivity.
• After waiting a minute, I logout, despite the warning about dishonor.
• Game crashes upon logging out.
• Get back into the game. After about 30 seconds into getting back into place, game teleports me to spawn. WTF? Was that teleport delayed?

What a perfect confluence of bugs…

Yeah, as it stands, FT’s damage is subpar. You’re better off running power bomber — takes less effort and will do more damage.

FT is a great weapon. In theory. In reality, it’s pretty kitten.

The gem store style section is getting to be a bit large. It needs categories to sort by! Or at least a more efficient system to preview things with.

He spent over half the video explaining just how poor the engineer’s traits, skills and weapons are implemented, things we’ve been saying for well over a year now.

Question is… will the devs care?

bearshaman.3421:

Personally I prefer getting new types of utility skills, leave toolbelt as the class mechanic, and diversify and rebalance things so we have more build diversity beyond “load all the kits and the healing turret”.

You do realize those kits constitute the majority of our damage, right?

Gaile, are you going to unsticky the BWE3 even topic that is stuck at the top too? It’s been over a year and a half since that event.

Not to mention, in PvE, the meta engineer build is a core build.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_DPS_Condition

There is a meta PvP condi engi build that isn’t optimal, but still pretty potent.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Flamethrower_Condi

I remember in a pvp match one time. I pulled a thief that was running away, and he hit some rock in the physics, and went flying so high in the air he nearly died on impact with the ground. My pistols made quick work of him afterward.

Spartacus.3192:

my biggest complaint is the change to light field blasting removing condi. I much prefer AOE retaliation.

I actually played a PvP match moments ago and the new blast finisher was a lifesaver. I was removing large amounts of condis left and right, on top of the beast tank of scrapper hammer.

This patch really boosted the existing meta engineer builds. I don’t know why they did it, but they did.

I’m going to pretend this thread is somehow still active, seeing as the mods somehow think it’s worth being stuck.

Fricking seriously?

Post gets moved to the graveyard within hours of being posted, despite explicitly pointing out that this is a graveyard.

Preface: I main engineer. I have somewhere around 3k hours on it. I’ve been playing since launch.

To the forum moderators

Please don’t relegate this post to the engineer forum. The devs don’t look at it. Nobody on the staff at ANet seems to look at it either: we still have a thread from the BWE3 of HoT pinned to the top of the forum. It’s a year and a half old, and the last time we saw a dev on the forum.

See for yourselves, if you don’t believe me.

To the ANet Devs

The last few balance patches to engineer have left me wondering if anybody on the development team plays engineer for more than a brief passing period. The reason I wonder this is because there doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason behind the changes. Let’s take a look at some examples:

• Blunderbuss: This skill has been unsplit from PvP and will now deal the higher (10%) damage values in all areas of the game. Increased bleeding stacks from 1 – 4 to 2 – 5, based on range. Increased bleeding duration from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.

Blunderbuss is skill #3 on an engineer’s rifle. The rifle is currently suffering from a host of different issues including underwhelming damage and generally being out-of-date. The rifle is not, however, suffering from a lack of condition damage. The rifle was, and has always been, a power-based weapon. What on earth is the reasoning behind bleeding instead of vulnerability? Why is this skill, which is so hard to pull off properly, being given a minor condi damage buff?

• Blowtorch: The number of burning applications that this skill applies has been increased from 1/2/3 to 2/3/4.

This is #4 skill on Pistol/Pistol offhand. Blowtorch was already a go-to on the condi engineer’s playbook. It wasn’t hurting for lack of burning. So why was it buffed? What was the reasoning? I’m not complaining because I love the increase in DPS, but why buff the meta build even further?

• Elixir U: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.

Utility skill that gives you quickness for about 4-5 seconds. The toolbelt skill either puts up a reflect wall or smoke screen (50/50). The thing is… Elixir U is almost never used, in any build. I only ever put it on for the toolbelt reflects in the Uncategorized Fractal. Why is this getting a minor change to cooldown when it’s still so underwhelming?

• Big Ol’ Bomb: This skill is now affected by Short Fuse. The visual size of this bomb has been increased by 33%.

This bug in Big Ol’ Bomb has been around since launch, roughly. Why has it taken this long to finally get fixed?

• Explosion: Skills that count as explosions for the traits Steel-Packed Powder, Explosive Powder, and Shrapnel are now marked with a skill fact. Scrapper gyro detonations are now considered explosions. Skills that do not hit the enemy, such as Smoke Bomb and Magnetic Bomb, are no longer considered explosions for combat clarity reasons.

Another case of bugs being fixed that have been around a while. Used to be that smoke bomb (a non-damaging bomb) could inflict shrapnel’s effect onto enemies. Why did this take so long to fix?

And these are just a handful of the odd changes made by devs in the recent past. You can probably go back over the last year and wonder what they’re thinking. My bet is that they don’t play the class and don’t know how to balance it.

The Crux of the Matter

I’ve read some great suggestions on the engineer forum. I’ve read some bad suggestions. But what I haven’t read is a recent dev post discussing any changes. Gifts are granted from on high, and gifts are taken away from high. But there is very little communication between the players and the devs around the engineer.

And this is starting to come to a head. Build diversity for engineers is at an all-time low. We have one primary build for PvE, and one primary build for PvP. Anything else is very situational and will get you mocked. Yes, all classes are suffering from a lack of diversity (HoT aggravated the problem with powercreep, IMO). But engineer is probably in the saddest state I’ve ever seen it — the vast majority of utilities are never used (and I mean never), I haven’t seen rifle or shield used competitively in well over a year, and there are many completely useless traits that are never touched.

So ANet. We need to talk about the engineer.

Xyonon.3987:

This patch gave Engineers safe spots in Raids and I like it. Both, power and condi are now over 30k dps with realistic buffs wich is pretty amazing, as they both got their uses according to each boss.

I admit I’m a bit hyped.

Our old (and technically current) raid build is actually very competitive. My guild actually told me to stay on my engineer in DPS-heavy raid fights because my DPS was 1k or 2k below our Eles, before the patch. These changes are enough to push my DPS within less than 1k of Ele DPS. It’s about rotation, and these changes only require me to add one skill to the rotation for an extra 3 stacks of burning.

The issue with engineers being discouraged from raids is the skill disparity. A great engineer can absolutely rock the damage. A bad one is like bringing dead weight. And generally speaking, there are more bad engineers than there are good ones.

PaladinVII.1647:

Phineas Poe.3018:

PaladinVII.1647:

This shows and proves the disconnect between the developers and the community in regards to the Engineer.

Just because they don’t reply that doesn’t mean they’re not reading.

See (2) and (2a). It has been over a year and a half. There is still a sticky of beta weekend 3 on the top of this forum. It is my belief that this is evidence that this forum is dead. I would be delighted to be proved wrong.

Didn’t even notice that til now. That’s incredibly disturbing that it’s still stuck.

vpy.6183:

Newbie Question : Which prof is the most sturdy while able to do nice self-healing ?

Define how sturdy you want, and how easy the healing process is.

For example, a tank ele is moderately sturdy, but their healing process is somewhat complicated. An engineer is generally pretty sturdy, and the healing process requires about 3 steps. A ranger is fairly sturdy generally, and healing is simple. But it can’t reach the tankiness of a well-played engineer or ele.

Chronotank, the current tank in most raids, is a mesmer build that makes heavy use of evades and blocks built into the class. It’s tough as nails.

My thoughts on the balance patch can be found here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Engineer-gripes-about-the-balance-patch/6506005

Does anybody on the ANet balance team remember this from about 2 months ago?

Gaile Gray.6029:

We’ve been making some gradual changes to pistol and rifle, hoping to bring them a bit more in line with hammer. As for Jump Shot, it’s difficult to land both the first and second attacks consistently unless you’re cleaving a downed player. To address this, we’ve moved some of the initial damage to the end of the attack, making it easier to spike. The total damage done by the skill will be the same.

• Blunderbuss: The damage of this ability has been increased by 10% at all range thresholds in PvP only.
• Jump Shot: The damage of the initial jump has been reduced by 56%. The damage of the landing has been increased by 28%

Hi balance team! It’s been months since you suggested improving Pistol and Rifle in PvP and PvE. The changes we got back then were relatively minor, and really didn’t do anything to help the overall situation for these weapons.

Today we got some improvements to kits, which is great for us condi engineers in PvE.

But pistol and rifle still suffer horrible issues in PvP, making them non-viable. Why has it been months since ANet acknowledged the issue, and they STILL haven’t responded with anything meaningful? The class is suffering badly from a lack of build diversity, and this balance patch does little to address the issue. Engineer needs some love, particularly in PvP.

Case in point: The changes to blunderbuss. Rifle has always been power-based weapon, not condition-based damage. Its main DPS comes from its autoattack. The other skills are utilities. So why does the balance team insist on giving blunderbuss more bleeds? This solves a problem no rifle engineer has. What gives?

Does the balance team not understand the class or its weapons? Do they not realize the issue with projectile hate right now? Do they not recognize that most of the engineers main weapons (and some of its kits) are projectile-based?

The more complicated classes are harder to play, but can be the most powerful if played right. That said, each one has its place depending on the game mode. For example, ranger (as druid) is critical in raids.

Complicated classes: Engineer, Elementalist, Revenant
Medium complexity classes: Mesmer, Thief, Warrior
Simple classes: Guardian, Necro, Ranger

Does anybody on the ANet balance team remember this from about 2 months ago?

Gaile Gray.6029:

We’ve been making some gradual changes to pistol and rifle, hoping to bring them a bit more in line with hammer. As for Jump Shot, it’s difficult to land both the first and second attacks consistently unless you’re cleaving a downed player. To address this, we’ve moved some of the initial damage to the end of the attack, making it easier to spike. The total damage done by the skill will be the same.

• Blunderbuss: The damage of this ability has been increased by 10% at all range thresholds in PvP only.
• Jump Shot: The damage of the initial jump has been reduced by 56%. The damage of the landing has been increased by 28%

Hi balance team! It’s been months since you suggested improving Pistol and Rifle in PvP and PvE. The changes we got back then were relatively minor, and really didn’t do anything to help the overall situation for these weapons.

Today we got some improvements to kits, which is great for us condi engineers in PvE.

But pistol and rifle still suffer horrible issues in PvP, making them non-viable. Why has it been months since ANet acknowledged the issue, and they STILL haven’t responded with anything meaningful? The class is suffering badly from a lack of build diversity, and this balance patch does little to address the issue. Engineer needs some love, particularly in PvP.

Case in point: The changes to blunderbuss. Rifle has always been power-based weapon, not condition-based damage. Its main DPS comes from its autoattack. The other skills are utilities. So why does the balance team insist on giving blunderbuss more bleeds? This solves a problem no rifle engineer has. What gives?

Does the balance team not understand the class or its weapons? Do they not realize the issue with projectile hate right now? Do they not recognize that most of the engineers main weapons (and some of its kits) are projectile-based?

You have allowed my guardian to become absolutely gorgeous.

zealex.9410:

Wasn’t the old mechanic to cc and kill the oozes as they spawn and then return to bursting the ooze ? The fight still requires you to do the same thing just now theres a big fat golden one yelling “im gonna kitten your kill if you let me” like the rest used to before the update. I’m not sure how the old start doesnt work here but oh well.

And im sorry but how is anet at fault if you encountered a teribad group exactly? its not bad design its clear and polish design yu just got unlucky with your pug run.

I’m not attributing the problem to ANet. This was a vent about idiotic behavior.

I was just in a group that reset the slime boss about 6 or 7 times because they thought they could repeat the old strategy and ignore the gold ooze. When I complained that they kept making the same mistakes, they vote kicked me.

Are you kidding me? A ten year old would realize the same strategy is not working. But because I voiced dissent, I got kicked.

nottsgman.8206:

so maybe stop using alt+f4 and quit the game properly instead?

edit to add: the game often ‘forgets’ where you last were, especially if you were last anywhere near pvp (or activities). this can cause crashes, or loading you into random places in the world. if you have an alt character you can get around it by loading that character first, then your first ‘forgotten’ character. the game will ‘remember’ where you really were then.

Yes, I know that is a workaround.

Doesn’t make it any less of a bug.

Read title. It’s a bizarre bug, seems to think you’re stuck in pvp when you next log on. I noticed it thought my engineer was a scrapper — which she is in pvp, but not pve.

psizone.8437:

Every class is in the same spot (to a certain extent).

We’re playing a game with hundreds or thousands of skill and trait variations per class and we’re stuck with 2-3 builds being used per class since a lot of the skills and traits are severely underpowered.

Anet need to properly revamp a lot of stuff to make build crafting more enjoyable and get some much needed variation back into the game.

It’s a little ironic that they added a new traitline, skills and a weapon per class and we’ve ended up with less builds being played than before they were added.

I agree, but engi is probably the most hamstrung at the moment. PvP is virtually restricted to one weapon, and PvE another. Variations are highly discouraged given the current meta. It’s ultimately boring.