Guild Wars 2

Lordrosicky.5813:

I tried some thief and shadowstep is lol.

It basically makes thief 0 skill. It is impossible to die because whenever you mess up you just shadowstep out.

It is a stun break (basically double stun break)
A 1200 range instant cast teleport
It removes a ton of condis
It is only on a 40s cd of something after the return (lol)

Solutions (one of the following):
1, Make it not a stun break
2, Make it not remove any condis.
3, Reduce the range to 600
4, Increase the cd to 90 seconds
5, Make the cd only start when the return is used and increase the cd to 70 seconds

So skill-less. Impossible to die on thief because of this skill.

Question: Have you ever encountered traps or symbols and tried to use shadowstep past them? What have you learned?

Game Modes

In PvP, there’s only one viable build. Everything else will either get you killed or is extremely situational.

In raids, most people prefer condi necros to condi engineers, because it’s harder to screw up condi necros. Engineers need perfect rotations to match a much simpler to play class, and we have little to show for it.

I can’t speak for WvW because I don’t play it, but I haven’t heard much good for engineers there either.

Fractals are the one endgame I’ve seen where engineers can do well… if the npcs sit still long enough. Otherwise, necros outdamage us, because we can’t achieve perfect rotations. We have slightly more utility, but not always enough to counter the DPS drop.

Weapons

We have 4 weapons to pick from: Rifle, Pistol, Shield, and Hammer.

Shield is a flat-out joke. Haven’t seen any decent engineer use it since launch.

Rifle is woefully underpowered and suffers from trying to do everything, and accomplish nothing. In PvP, you’re going to shoot yourself more often than hit the enemy. And its DPS in PvE is pretty weak compared to hammer.

Pistols are in an acceptable state in PvE for their condi power, but suffer the same issues as rifle in PvP — you end up shooting yourself because of the projectile hate.

Hammer is in an acceptable state for PvP. Maybe a little powerful on the defensive side of things. In PvE, it’s acceptable for questing, but generally not that useful in Fractals or Raids.

Kits

Let’s talk about kits. Kits are one of the “draws” of the class, because they offer weapon swapping with virtually no cooldown. The drawback is they are necessary in virtually every engineer build if you want optimal damage output. This means we have to devote at least one (if not more) utility skills to something that other classes get the tilde key (~) for. Many utility skills are non-viable purely because the power of the kits outweighs them.

Grenade kit and bomb kit are not viable in PvP whatsoever. Bombs are woefully underpowered for the amount of effort that goes into proper placement. Grenades suffer the rifle and pistol problem that all projectiles face. These same kits, however, are mission critical in PvE if you want good condi damage. Why is there such a disparity?

Elixir kit is great for hammer PvP builds, but otherwise not that useful.

Flamethrower is good for all condi builds. No changes need to be made to it, IMO.

Traits

If you look at the current meta PvP builds for engineer, almost all of them feature alchemy. Specifically, mid-mid-up. In PvE, every meta build has explosives, specifically down-mid-mid. All other traits are specific to whether you’re a condi pistol or power hammer.

As designers, you should be concerned when every build is doing the same thing. That means that either that particular setup is overpowered compared to everything else, or everything else is woefully underpowered compared to that setup. In my opinion, the latter issue is the problem. All other traits are meant to address a meta that no longer exists, a meta before HoT. A meta that is irrelevant.

Quick Summary

Engineer is in a bad way right now. People prefer other classes for most PvE endgame situations. In PvP, we have only one viable build.

For the amount of skill the class requires, we don’t see an equal or proportional return in damage output. This is frankly frustrating, because the class is otherwise great fun. Please do something ANet, before the class is relegated to complete obsolescence.

A fundamental difference with engineer is that we have to use slot skills for absolutely mission critical kit skills. No other class has that problem.

They tried to address that with the hammer, but the result is that in PvP, hammer is the only viable meta build, and the rest of our few weapons have been left in the dust.

2600+ games now — been playing since launch, so I’ve seen the ins and outs. Currently sitting in gold (around 1550). Got a bad luck streak lately and bad teams, so I’m lower than usual.

Thing I’ve noticed is that it doesn’t matter what season or time you play — ever since launch you will get stupid people on your team if you solo queue. It might be easier to require 5v5 premades, and incorporate a special LFG tool to make it easier (IE machine will match a party together based on what it thinks, then people can change it up, then enter). In a sense, it already does this. Just doesn’t give you enough time to actually plan.

I would say most of the time the PvP has been hit or miss. The hits have been great. The misses… well, aggravating. It doesn’t help that ArenaNet’s balance patches are few and far between, and often they hit so hard that the meta shifts to a new unbalanced state. Instead of trying to fix it all at once, I suggest they do smaller balance changes constantly, which would make fine tuning much easier and prevent drastic shifts in the meta.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Vagrant.7206:

The scrapper is in a good place right now

So to make matters worse, not only is the engineer currently pigeonholed into a singular build with slight variations at most tiers, but the build itself just isn’t all that desirable to others and, to be honest, isn’t very fun to play. 1v1s feel like they drag on forever, even when we’re advantaged.

I can’t believe I’m saying this but I really do miss the days when we ran grenades.

The biggest drawback is that our “catch up” skill doesn’t do much to catch us up. Enemies can by and large run away when they want to and we can’t do much about it.

Shaogin.2679:

Warrior, Guardian, and Necro have the most diversity, Rangers and Thieves are limited to only a couple of builds, and Mesmer, Elementalist, Engineer, and Revenant are limited to one viable build.

Thus why I said just about all, seeing as only 3 of 9 professions have any real diversity in viable build choices.

But the majority of complaints in OP’s post is about core Engineer, which is a universal problem across all core professions, not just the Engineer.

Yeah, but the problem is compounded by the fact that engineers only have a few weapons to pick from — we have the fewest weapons available of any class. With 3 out of 4 weapons kitten… we really lack build diversity. With the addition of the projectile hate, many of our core skills became utterly impractical. There simply isn’t any counterplay for the engineer to deal with the problems.

Actually, I think they just need some minor tweaking to have condi removal. That’s about it — many of the builds that can solo him do so slowly, building up condis.

Thieves aren’t worse at rotating.

Everyone else is better at it now.

Seriously, the only class with significant distance teleports besides thieves at launch were guardians or mesmers with a very specific setup. Otherwise thieves out-rotated everyone else handily.

Nowdays, guardians, mesmers, elementalist, rangers, and revenants can easily catch up to thieves. Only classes that have some difficulty catching up are warriors, necros, and engineers.

TL ; DR: Thieves didn’t get worse. Everybody else got better. The meta changed.

I main engie, FYI.

Right now we’re looking at a class with only one viable build at high level play. That is the scrapper most of you love and hate. The scrapper is in a good place right now, with damage output being about right, and tankiness about right (the projectile hate is a little high, but minor tweaking could fix it). A high skill scrapper can do very well, and a low skill scrapper is a liability.

With a very high level of skill, condi pistol is possible, but the amount of skill required does not correlate with a return of power or utility. It has to be played like a D/P thief, but not nearly as effective. Many builds will outright counter it with minimal effort involved (I’m looking at you necros), in which case, you might as well /cower. The going is slow for a meta that’s extremely fast-paced and spammy.

Rifle is a joke. The projectile hate is real, and the DPS on the rifle is just sad for a two handed weapon. Supplementing with kits rarely works, as the kits you would use for power (grenades, possibly bombs) are also subject to the same issues as the rifle. Turrets are useless, as listed below.

And shield? Been a joke in PvP for a very long time. Just forget it.

That’s ignoring all the other issues — utility skills that aren’t certain gyros or kits are completely underwhelming. Gadgets by and large don’t work and their utility is sad. The turrets have all been left behind with the massive amount of AoE and projectile hate. All the elixirs can be reflected when thrown (seriously, wtf?) and are relatively underwhelming given the importance of those utility slots.

And only a few of the traits are ever worth taking. Almost every build I’ve seen in the last few months has the alchemy line – Mid, mid, up. There’s very little variation, which means the traits need reworking as well.

I’d also like to point out with the turrets specifically, they are something the engineer class was sold on:

Creativity.3816:

Gonna make some people mad here, but I’ve played games with these smurfs and they’re earning their wins. Just yesterday we had a game go 450-500 in their favor that was fairly close until the very end. It doesn’t say anything about NA versus EU except for the fact that EU has more high-rated players, who would be able to give smurf accounts a hard time.

These players are playing during NA primetime, and I don’t think they are “gaming the system”. If you want to do something about it, get to a rating where you can play against them and find them in 3 days when they play to remove decay again. People that can’t make it out of Silver, let alone into the top 250 really have no reason to be complaining. Play the game to have fun, improve, and to have good matches.

Sure, it might be a bit unfair to players who actually deserve to take those leaderboard spots, but it doesn’t pertain to you. Notice how the only people that complain about this stuff are people that use it as an excuse that they’re rated “lower than they should be”?

Exceeeeeeeeeeept… the leaderboards are supposed to be a representation of skill. When players play the minimum number of games, they’re demonstrating a margin of error, not skill.

Abelisk.4527:

The real question is where condi damage went

It’s lumped in with normal damage. You can actually watch it tick up in real time if you’re not too busy in a fight.

See the image for proof. Several characters with 10-14 wins and 0 losses are on top of the leaderboard. The only one with a respectable number of fights is #5.

ANet… I get the need for placement matches having value. But they have too much value. We’re mid-season now and this is still happening.

PierPiero.9142:

Hi , how do you see engineer now in this meta ?
i find it really strong as bruiser/bunker ( paladin or mender , i prefer mender ) . Quite strong in 1 vs 1 but not as determinant as before.
Many time i am stacked in really long 1 vs 1 fights. I can survive and the fight seems stale till a teammate arrive to +1 or an enemy arrive to +1 . This meta seems to me quite bunker again .
Now there is a great return : scepter elementalists hit really hard . I tryed marauder freshair with tempest ( scepter focus ) becouse in a match we were already 4 engineer ( 2 and 2 ) and it seemed to me an hard matchup for scrappers . I saw their heal going down quite fast under scepter so it seems to me that this season as scrapper will not be as easy as elder ones ( and i don’t play ele often ) .
I tried 2 matches with condi engi ( new amulet ) . it is stronger against condition but it dies with one hit. I think vanilla condi engi is yet less effective than scrapper .

It’s underwhelming right now. If you aren’t playing scrapper right now, you’ll generally get left in the dust. And scrapper isn’t super competitive either, just kinda tanky.

Generally they’re easy if you know what you’re doing and they aren’t perfect. Scrapper should generally win out, although it’ll be a slow fight.

Basically, do your normal damage routine when they’re in sword/shield. So that’s most of your weapon skills, 5 to cc -> 3 to continue the CC. 4 for blocking predictable attacks and wading through the traps. 2 for nice damage. 1 will generate might stacks.

When they switch to LB, pop off your reflects.

And don’t forget elixir kit. It’s way more powerful than you might think for fighting on a point. The 5 skill heals 2 condis and gives 2 might stacks. The 4 skill does some hefty AoE damage and when combined with 5 gives you retal. It also gives you might. 1-3 of elixir are… situational.

Pop bulwark and purge gyro as needed — you can detonate them early for lightning field, for extra CC with hammer 3. I use stealth gyro as well, although whatever you prefer works. Your stunbreak also gives might and removes condis — don’t just leave it sitting around for stuns.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

• People who fight off point or get kited by mesmers off point while it is not taken or occupied by opposing color
• People who say literally nothing until we are losing, then explode in rage because nobody knows what they’re doing.
• Thieves that refuse to switch if we have more than two thieves. (I can’t be really frustrated at this because some people may just have one character. That’s a failing of the game more than the player I think.)
• People who see 3+ stacked on mid and push it by themselves
• Any non-heavy that does the above (X2)
• People that wont regroup when team wipes and just run off to w/e point is being contested.
• People who go home out of the gate when its already being capped and stand there.
• Any non mes or thief that pushes far without help.
• People that push far and stand there in expectation, even if they manage to fully cap the point when opposing team just completely wiped. Rally at mid please, you’re going to get eaten alive.
• Thieves that don’t at least decap/harass far when it’s free (This is your job >:{ )
• Afkers.
• People who say nothing in game at all
• People who wont listen to the 1 minute call for “Proceed to [kittening] TRANQ”
• People who leave home abandoned when a thief/mes is clearly harassing home.
• People who have a downed ally in a team fight and a downed opponent in a team fight that wont stomp the opponent if the ally is not in danger of dying immediately.
• Unfocused necros
• The -other- kind of unfocused necros.
• Blaming the thief for the loss when the thief performed well/demoralizing the thief in game when far is being harassed properly, because your sorry butt can’t stay off the ground and you think that by blaming the thief nobody will notice.
• Thieves that port out of a heal when they arent in danger of being stomped (or that wont stealth themselves when they are in danger of being stomped when that option is available so I/someone can rez)
  *Thieves that do this but up a ledge . (X2)
• Failing to update on status of Lord.

If you do not fall into any of these categories Idec if we lose. Usually if team loses it’s because of one or more of these is being done incessantly (obvious pet peeves like “waaah, thief ported” aside) .

This +1

Oh, and people who don’t pay attention to what builds people are running.

Oh, and facing the same people you lost against 4 times in a row.

Cecilia.5179:

Invuln spams need to be nerfed globally. Nobody likes classes that are immune to damage 90% of the time.
Of course, nobody likes being forced to take all of the incoming damage either like Necromancer, so there has to be a middle ground.

Amen to this.

displacedTitan.6897:

For “purity of purpose” I think Rocket Boots shouldn’t move you as far as it does, I mean its clearly a damage skill since they buffed it’s base damage for purity, it should barely move you at all! Someone get ANet on here and explain why rocket boots seems like an escape skill!

Also I think that hammer should have some Condi on it and remove some of the DPS, its clearly lacking in “purity of purpose” as well!

Lol @ ANet, they really have no clue what to do with Engineer. I cant wait to see the next train wreck elite spec they give us. Maybe another set of AI minions will do the trick!

Next they’ll give us flying turrets that can’t keep up…

oh wait.

Artaz.3819:

Alec B.8905:

Engineer

Jump Shot: The damage of the initial jump has been reduced by 56%. The damage of the landing has been increased by 28%.

The best part is ANet clearly devoted resources to review this particular Rifle skill but still didn’t address it’s lack of evasion frames like similar abilities across multiple other classes. Especially needed for compensation as opponent players react to and dodge the landing damage …

I know right? It’s not like we can spam it like vault… And its damage isn’t even close to comparable.

sophiewhite.3149:

Vagrant.7206:

sophiewhite.3149:

Vagrant.7206:

coro.3176:

Alec B.8905:

sitting at zero because I got no engi changes I liked to even bother with pvp :I

WTB more base engi buffs and scrapper nerfs because scrapper screwed base engi.
MORE RIFLE BUFFS PLZ and quit nerfing things out of nowhere without any reason to.

the rifle change was not a buff, it was more loss of dmg. which was the exact opposite if what they were trying to do (bring it up to par with hammer).

Too true. That Jump Shot change feels like a nerf given how hard it is to land such a long telegraphed skill. Maybe if it was faster or had evades..

Things that were (I think) designed to nerf Scrapper, but ended up killing Base Engi even more:

• Gear Shield 3s->2s – Base Engi needs a long block for defense. It is the only defensive skill in a lot of builds.
• Healing Turret 0.5s->0.75s – Base Engi can no longer rely on HT to go off when cast. There’s a very real risk of it being interrupted or destroyed before it finishes. This hurts Scrapper, yes, but it hurts Base more because of the lack of defensive weapon skills on Rifle/Pistol.

Ultimately though, It’s projectile hate and HoT power creep that are forcing certain playstyles on pvp. It’s far too easy to just sit on point and spam aoe.

Here’s what I see when I play p/p Engi:

• Warrior: Ignores conditions for 30+ seconds + reflects on all blocks. Have to kite the ENTIRE time, but first I have to get them to trigger berserker stance.

• Mesmer: Nearly infinite blocks (which also reflect). Then spiked, then back to the temporary invulnerability… spiked, blocks again… I just avoid mesmers because there’s very little I can do.

the amount of misinformation here is insane. 30+ seconds? where are you getting that? because obviously me playing warrior for several months isnt enough.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Berserker_Stance

While I was exaggerating, this alone is 12-15 seconds of resistance. Combine with healing signet and you have 18-21 seconds of resistance. Run away and come back and you can repeat the process, as I have seen many warriors do. But that’s 18 seconds of my build being totally kitten while you’re fully powered. All I can do is hope I can cause you to trigger berserker stance early and kite for 20 seconds until I can finally do some damage.

Condi engi is in a real bad way right now — it’s viable only due to player skill. Any newbie trying to play it will fail spectacularly. Rifle engi is just flat out pointless at this point.

i fixed my comment to be less rude but convey the same message. honestly what would you rather they do? not have any counter to condis at all? condis need a counter. warrior is one of the few anti condi classes alongside necro. except necro can also take out resistance by corrupting it and the meta build has all the corruption you could dream of. so in turn warrior counters most condi necro counters warrior condi resistance in a team fight but 1v1 warrior would take out a necro. this seems fair to me idk about you. if you want to nerf warrior shave some of that cc off. but dont kill the class because others dont like it.

Actually, no, I don’t want to see a change to warrior in this case. Resistance is fine… for the most part. If annoying.

What I want to see are changes in other areas to even the playing field — engineers need a skill or trait to pierce blocks/reflects. It’s immensely frustrating to be unable to touch warriors until they’re right next to me. It makes it difficult to kite the resistance.

Nikkinella.8254:

Spoken as someone who has obviously never played ele. That would force ele even further into the boring healbot role and kill any other semi viable build. A terrible solution. and you’re completely wrong about it. Your lack of knowledge of the class is apparent if you think this is a good solution. Reducing aoe heals and increasing self survival on ele would make it less of a pain in team fights, but not completely useless by itself and a hindrance to the team if the ele chooses to play something besides healbot. Not all of us enjoy playing support, killing all other builds to slightly nerf the healbot build is absolutely stupid.

Increasing self heals makes them even more capable of bunkering than now. That’s just aggravating the current problem. Increasing outgoing heals but reducing self-heals allows them to continue as team support, but not able to sit in the middle of the fight the whole time.

so say we nerf ele. what else do they bring to the table without buffing anything else?

1) My point was to tweak the healing the ele does, not nerf. If you misconstrue a tweak as a nerf, you need to learn how to comprehend what you read.
2) This thread was about dealing with the bunker/tank meta. If you want suggestions on how else to improve the ele (to make it viable for other builds), by all means discuss them, but that’s not what this thread was written for.
3) I’m not against buffing ele in other aspects of gameplay. That’s fine by me, I know they’re weaker in damage, generally. What I am against is the bunker that sits in the middle of a 4v4 fight and makes it impossible to take down anyone on their team and themselves in the process.

This is just crying from someone that doesnt want to change their build to counter ele and would rather cry for nerfs so they can keep using the same build and not having to adapt.

I’ve changed my build several times in response, but thanks for speaking for me.

One more note here: it’s really funny that haters hate ele or healbot because of what it is. But…if ele will be spotted using something different like staff or scepter or TRY TO PLAY DRIFRENT ROLE immediately is harassed by his own team: has to deal with toxic behaviour, 4v5 statements, threats that somebody will afk cause you use stone heart trait and similar nice things like that.

I get the same problem for doing anything other than the meta engineer build – lot of toxicity. Which is a problem because the meta engi build is underwhelming, imo.

sophiewhite.3149:

Vagrant.7206:

coro.3176:

Alec B.8905:

sitting at zero because I got no engi changes I liked to even bother with pvp :I

WTB more base engi buffs and scrapper nerfs because scrapper screwed base engi.
MORE RIFLE BUFFS PLZ and quit nerfing things out of nowhere without any reason to.

the rifle change was not a buff, it was more loss of dmg. which was the exact opposite if what they were trying to do (bring it up to par with hammer).

Too true. That Jump Shot change feels like a nerf given how hard it is to land such a long telegraphed skill. Maybe if it was faster or had evades..

Things that were (I think) designed to nerf Scrapper, but ended up killing Base Engi even more:

• Gear Shield 3s->2s – Base Engi needs a long block for defense. It is the only defensive skill in a lot of builds.
• Healing Turret 0.5s->0.75s – Base Engi can no longer rely on HT to go off when cast. There’s a very real risk of it being interrupted or destroyed before it finishes. This hurts Scrapper, yes, but it hurts Base more because of the lack of defensive weapon skills on Rifle/Pistol.

Ultimately though, It’s projectile hate and HoT power creep that are forcing certain playstyles on pvp. It’s far too easy to just sit on point and spam aoe.

Here’s what I see when I play p/p Engi:

• Warrior: Ignores conditions for 30+ seconds + reflects on all blocks. Have to kite the ENTIRE time, but first I have to get them to trigger berserker stance.

• Mesmer: Nearly infinite blocks (which also reflect). Then spiked, then back to the temporary invulnerability… spiked, blocks again… I just avoid mesmers because there’s very little I can do.

the amount of misinformation here is insane. 30+ seconds? where are you getting that? because obviously me playing warrior for several months isnt enough.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Berserker_Stance

While I was exaggerating, this alone is 12-15 seconds of resistance. Combine with healing signet and you have 18-21 seconds of resistance. Run away and come back and you can repeat the process, as I have seen many warriors do. But that’s 18 seconds of my build being totally kitten while you’re fully powered. All I can do is hope I can cause you to trigger berserker stance early and kite for 20 seconds until I can finally do some damage.

Condi engi is in a real bad way right now — it’s viable only due to player skill. Any newbie trying to play it will fail spectacularly. Rifle engi is just flat out pointless at this point.

Nikkinella.8254:

Been 4 years and bad players still don’t know how to kill ele. Unless its a free kill, they cry for nerfs. Its finally somewhat viable, and doesn’t have to just be a boring healbot anymore, and people cry. This is a pure learn to play issue. CC an ele and they die instantly. If you see the other team has an ele and dont change your skills before the match starts in order to cc them, the fault lies on you and you alone.

No, this has been a recurring problem for ele for a long time. High skill eles are near invulnerable without 3 or more people focusing on them. By that point in time, the result is that all your other points have been decapped. In game modes like conquest, killing such an ele is such a monumental waste of time that it screws your team.

Can we kill them? Yes.

Can we kill them in a reasonable amount of time and with a reasonable amount of effort? No.

Personally I hate the healbot build and would be happy to see it nerfed into the ground. its boring to play as and boring to fight against. I’d be happy if they nerfed the outgoing heals but buffed the ele’s self heals in return. Because despite what bad players may think, ele dies very easily when focused, perhaps easier than necro because ele doesnt have a 2nd lifebar and has the lowest health of any profession.

I think the inverse would be a better solution — reduce self heals but increase outgoing healing. Would force the ele to run away or play defensively, rather than sit in the middle spamming overloads.

coro.3176:

Alec B.8905:

sitting at zero because I got no engi changes I liked to even bother with pvp :I

WTB more base engi buffs and scrapper nerfs because scrapper screwed base engi.
MORE RIFLE BUFFS PLZ and quit nerfing things out of nowhere without any reason to.

the rifle change was not a buff, it was more loss of dmg. which was the exact opposite if what they were trying to do (bring it up to par with hammer).

Too true. That Jump Shot change feels like a nerf given how hard it is to land such a long telegraphed skill. Maybe if it was faster or had evades..

Things that were (I think) designed to nerf Scrapper, but ended up killing Base Engi even more:

• Gear Shield 3s->2s – Base Engi needs a long block for defense. It is the only defensive skill in a lot of builds.
• Healing Turret 0.5s->0.75s – Base Engi can no longer rely on HT to go off when cast. There’s a very real risk of it being interrupted or destroyed before it finishes. This hurts Scrapper, yes, but it hurts Base more because of the lack of defensive weapon skills on Rifle/Pistol.

Ultimately though, It’s projectile hate and HoT power creep that are forcing certain playstyles on pvp. It’s far too easy to just sit on point and spam aoe.

Pretty much everything core engineer is getting kitten on. I cannot use pistols or rifle in any matches without at least one person yelling at me because I’m not “meta.” There is no good method to counter some of the BS I see — reflects from nearly every class, projectile destruction, and I have to overly rely on kits. The only reason pistol pvp still exists is because the kits aren’t completely kitten.

Here’s what I see when I play p/p Engi:

• Warrior: Ignores conditions for 30+ seconds + reflects on all blocks. Have to kite the ENTIRE time, but first I have to get them to trigger berserker stance.
• Guardian: Smite condition, heal trap, leap of faith… blocks out the wazoo… Pray they run out of skills to spam before you die.
• Rev: One of the few metas that has no good counter to condi. I like fighting revs.
• Ranger: Watch conditions disappear for no reason, taunted by pet… knocked down, taunted by pet again, Immob… hopefully by this time they’ve burned all their CD’s and you’re still standing.
• Other engineers: Reflects out the wazoo, purge gyro, elixir gun 5 and heal turret. If an enemy engineer running hammer dies to you, then they’re really bad.
• Thief: Generally not too bad if they aren’t perfect. If they are perfect… interrupts and stealth.
• Mesmer: Nearly infinite blocks (which also reflect). Then spiked, then back to the temporary invulnerability… spiked, blocks again… I just avoid mesmers because there’s very little I can do.
• Necro: Avoid at all costs. All conditions will come right back or kill a teammate. Because plague sig is OP as hell against other condi builds.
• Ele: Ignores most of your conditions until a power build comes along and helps. Then you do ok. Otherwise you spend most of your time in flamethrower and tool kits for all their reflects.

Proposed solution? Grandmaster firearms trait to pierce blocks and reflects with projectiles. That would solve a SIGNIFICANT number of problems.

shion.2084:

Vagrant.7206:

shion.2084:

I’m in that range too, I’m not seeing too many trash players. Maybe folks with different non-coordinated strategies, but not a lot of insta kill fodder. I’ve also noted that eles seem annoyingly effective with their seemingly spammable area CC, then rock glidy mode then back to area CC thing. If one is speced into defence I literrally draw it on point and cannot take it out with my engi. I guess I could go marauder but then I’d be spike bait.

Even that is no guarantee. The only thing I’ve seen work is spammed, hard CC — which guardians used to provide with their traps. Power Revs can provide this as well.

If I had to provide a solution? Reduce ele self-healing. They would retain their usefulness in group fights, but would be unable to sit in the thick of things and soak up all the damage.

No my response was what they do, not what to do to them I wonder what happens when two of the AOE CC spamming eles run into each other on point…. that would be sort of amusing to watch. Haven’t seen it happen yet.

Not a whole lot happens. Both fight for a while until they declare a truce or someone else comes along.

shion.2084:

I’m in that range too, I’m not seeing too many trash players. Maybe folks with different non-coordinated strategies, but not a lot of insta kill fodder. I’ve also noted that eles seem annoyingly effective with their seemingly spammable area CC, then rock glidy mode then back to area CC thing. If one is speced into defence I literrally draw it on point and cannot take it out with my engi. I guess I could go marauder but then I’d be spike bait.

Even that is no guarantee. The only thing I’ve seen work is spammed, hard CC — which guardians used to provide with their traps. Power Revs can provide this as well.

If I had to provide a solution? Reduce ele self-healing. They would retain their usefulness in group fights, but would be unable to sit in the thick of things and soak up all the damage.

Phil.8901:

1.7k skill is trash right now, too many people dunno how to play correctly.

If an ele can manage 3 people is totally a shame for these 3 people and should try other games.

This is not possible in a decentl skill area to do this.

It’s great seeing you trash talk 1.7k skill but not post your own. I smell a troll.

Phil.8901:

It’s a low tier issue.

Learn to focus the ele, celestial and cleric age is over since a bit

I’m in platinum son. 1700.

It’s not a low tier issue. I see them in every match, and the team who has the most ele tanks tends to win.

Every classes right now is very weak to power damage, ofc if people play braindead condi classes is not really noticable but without celestial, soldier and cleric power Dps classes if They know how to focus are all a pain to handle.
Ele needs to kite quickly under power damage pressure, druid is the same.
These compliants are really useless, it’s all a learn to play issue.

No, not really. High skill ele players have about 5 or 6 different “okitten” skills. I’ve seen a single ele tank manage 3 players focusing on them. All the classes focusing were power builds.

what changes in the last patch made this build possible for them?

Ironically, I think, the changes to guardian traps. The sheer level of CC provided by guardian traps countered the ele tank builds. Eles have been, and always will be, vulnerable to hard CC (who isn’t?) — which the guardian used to provide. The amount of hard CC’s has dropped significantly as a result, and eles are now capable of sustaining much longer.

Platinum 1700+ right now. I tend to play engineer or guardian, although I occasionally dabble with thief.

• Ele tanks are in every match. They slow down everything and make groupfights slow and unfun. Combine that with the massive rezzing abilities people have AND NOTHING EVER HAPPENS. Please reduce their self-healing. Right now they have it both ways and it makes the fights miserable. As it stands, whoever has the most ele tanks wins.
• Three classes have the same problem — Mesmer, Thief, and Revenants. If those classes are being played by high skill players, they are OP as hell, becoming nearly impossible to kill along with their high damage. But if the player is anything less than perfect, these classes are underwhelming.
• DH is in an ok place at the moment. Their groupfight presence is still too strong, 1v1 they’re not too hard.
• Rangers… I almost never see them any more except as healing druids. They just don’t seem viable in high level play.
• Necros seem to be in an alright spot. When they backline they’re devastating.
• Warrior is in a strange spot. Their burst damage and ability to ignore damage is devastating to classes without sustain, but they are wimpy to classes that kite and can sustain well.
• Engineers are still suffering from the lack of build diversity. There’s simply no viable alternative to scrapper hammer, especially at higher levels. This build suffers from an inability to chase fleeing foes and flee itself.

sPvP being so focused on point capture, traps need some sort of delay or limiting mechanic on use, so the mindless DH stack with trap spam isn’t such broken.

GW1 had such a method. Traps were easily interruptable — any damage and your trap laying was interrupted.

Seriously. If I see more ele tanks I’m going to frigging scream.

They make points impossible to take, regardless if it’s 1 on 1 or a 5v5 group fight because of their outgoing healing. It’s really not fun.

I just played 3 matches in a row against the same 2 people I lost to before. I kept seeing people I lost to on their team as well. I dropped over 100 ranks before I gave up for the night.

Why is this happening again?

That’s gold right there.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Upcoming-Changes-to-Skills/6426982

Callllled it

Tarasicodissa.7084:

1- Does he have more health in normal mode than in challenge mode? Because I know from our daily challenge mode runs that he dies in about 5 minutes. I cannot imagine any way how the kill would take you 15 minutes. Are you doing a 5 man party run or are you just soloing/duoing it?

2- EZ solution: don’t get downed during the fight. His attacks are SO CLEARLY telegraphed, you absolutely SHOULD be punished for ingoring them. Also, his charge doesn’t kill anyone even in challenge mode. It just applies a few bleeds. They have the potential to kill you eventually, so either heal through it or condi cleanse.

3 – I dunno, to me this seems to work just like with any other fractal. The difficulty is fine IMO. Challenge mode can possibly feel a bit_ challenging at first, but becomes really easy once you get accustomed to it.

• I don’t run with any particular group because my guild doesn’t do that and I don’t have enough friends who play fractals regularly. It’s rare that PUGs are optimized appropriately for the fight, the result is it taking 15 minutes.

• There are times when you cannot dodge his attacks. Such as when your evade bar is empty from dodging previous attacks, or when you’re trying to get a teammate up to keep them from dying. And his charge attack will instantly kill a downed player, normal or challenge mode. Not sure what fractal you’re playing. Only time I haven’t seen it do that is when somebody’s build is specifically designed to be a tank, such as a celestial druid.

• No, this fight is clearly different in terms of difficulty – even with practice. Bloomheart you can kite around while people get dead people up. You cannot kite Enolyss — his attacks are huge and he switches targets rapidly and without any predictability. Mossy also doesn’t sit around and wail on downed people. Enolyss hits also do significantly more damage, and a single person going down can doom the entire fight, especially if it occurs in the later phases of the fight.

• I also want to point out that the increase in difficulty on Bloomy was not accompanied by better loot either. This is a problem ANet seems to have when it comes to understanding risk vs reward.

I like the concept of this fractal. It has unique challenges and requires effort and attention to detail.

I hate this fractal’s implementation.

• Enolyss has the health of a freaking god. So much so that the fight takes nearly 15 minutes with a PS warrior and everybody DPS’ing as hard as they can. When you fail the fight, that’s 15 frigging minutes of your life you just wasted. That’s not fun, especially when some of us have real lives and jobs and can’t spend a lot of time every time this fractal comes up in rotation.

• Enolyss’ aggro AI wails on players who are downed, making it even harder and longer to rez. His charge attack at high levels will instantly kill anybody who has been downed. This is salt and punishment on the wound.

• The difficulty of the fractal is much higher than other fractals. But where’s the extra rewards? Great, some skins that I don’t care for much and are one time loot drops. Why would I want higher difficulty and see no real increase in reward? Isn’t that the point of risk vs reward?

I had to quit tonight with a competent group because we failed twice near Enolyss’ death and I had to go to work the next day. That was nearly 45 minutes of playtime wasted. That’s not fun and is insulting.

Pyriall.1683:

Vagrant.7206:

And that’s on top of the other issues with rifle and pistol — all the projectile hate makes those weapons virtually useless in pvp or wvw. Combine that with some of the condi hate for pistol, and it’s plainly obvious why most engineers eschew the two in favor of hammer builds.

In terms of damage, engineer pistol condi damage is extremely high. But good luck landing any skills and having them stick. Rifle is just low damage, low chance of hitting, and severely underwhelming. Improving some numbers won’t fix the crux of the problem.

Pistol is fine and you shouldn’t have any issues landing its damage. Rifle suffers from identity crisis. The auto attacks are too weak, 2 of the skills require close proximity for a ranged weapon, and one relies on condition damage. Increase the damage output on auto attacks. You should be able to exchange ranged damage with any other ranged damage dealer if you are using the weapon set.

Pistol is actually in a worse state than you might think. There’s a lot of condi hate out there in the meta. With the exception of revenants, most classes can have excellent condi removal. The current engi pistol meta is powerful amongst low skill players, but at higher levels it is simply underwhelming for such a high-skill build. Warriors can output more raw damage and raw condis while ignoring damage and blocking. Necros can literally counter the entire build with one skill (plague signet). For a build about building damage over time, we don’t get much opportunity to do so. I’ve been playing pistol engi for a long time, and right now it’s in bad shape.

Also ignoring that shield has been worthless for a long time. 2 out of 4 weapons are virtually worthless, 1 is weak, and the other is acceptable. This is why most engineers are using hammers in PvP.

And I will say that rifle is in way worse state. It is neither here nor there — not enough condition damage, direct damage, or utility. It’s functionally pointless for almost all game modes, PvP, PvE, or WvW. That’s sad for a weapon that makes up one of the four “weapons” we have to choose from.

Deniara Devious.3948:

This entire “balance” patch is a BAD joke when it comes to engineer rifle. It seems the developers do NOT understand the game at all nor the engineer profession.

People choose hammer over rifle, because of the utility it gives. I haven’t done any tests, but I think the damage between rifle and hammer is roughly the same, but hammer has far better utility. You can reflect and black and do good damage at same time with hammer. Hammer has 1200 range AoE stun, blast finisher, lighting field etc. A mere 10 % damage buff to bluderbuss isn’t gonna make it break or break it. And why the change is just pvp specific? Rifle engineers are rare as hen’s teeth in WvWvW, so they would even more require buffs in WvWvW. Hammer is much more common there as well.

If Arenanet would have wanted to buff rifle, they would have been adding functionality to rifle:
- make blunderbuss (rifle #3) a blast finisher
- add evade frame to jump shot (rifle #5) and make the animation tiny bit faster to make it a viable movement skill (now immobilize in air really ruins it)

I would leave overcharged shot (rifle #4) as it is. High risk and high reward. And yes, I would shave off hammer a bit, it has too many goodies going on at same time.

It is really sad that Arenanet doesn’t seem to get “it”, when it comes to balancing engineer. They added some damage to rocket boots, which is was another stupid change. People do NOT choose rocket boots for the damage, but for the utility. At the current form most gadgets are sorely underpowered compared to kits, elixirs and gyros. A better to way to make them more viable is to add some functionality e.g. make rocket kick a stun break and/or lower the cooldown.

Not to mention Arenanet destroyed medkit when they turned in into “toss” skills. Medkit really needs attention. Why an earth still medkit #1 doesn’t heal the engineer himself and has so small cone it is really utterly useless skill in the game (compared to druid staff auto attack and ele water staff #1, which both do damage and heal at same time).

*The lack of viable healing skills for many professions is a serious issue e.g. almost all warrior’s use healing signet for obvious reasons. *Arenanet could have made some other healing skills viable e.g. reducing the cooldown “To the limit!” to 25 s and lowering the healing amount accordingly or reducing the activation time to 1/2 s.

The lack of diversity in viable builds is one of the biggest problems in spvp and I don’t see this patch much fixing it. The deletion of many amulets + HoT power creep was the last straw for me.

And that’s on top of the other issues with rifle and pistol — all the projectile hate makes those weapons virtually useless in pvp or wvw. Combine that with some of the condi hate for pistol, and it’s plainly obvious why most engineers eschew the two in favor of hammer builds.

In terms of damage, engineer pistol condi damage is extremely high. But good luck landing any skills and having them stick. Rifle is just low damage, low chance of hitting, and severely underwhelming. Improving some numbers won’t fix the crux of the problem.

FlOwMaKeRs.8623:

4 years and you guys can not even figure out how to balance the overall game once and for all.

This is disgusting, it should embarrass you!!

You do understand the nature of expansions and player ingenuity right?

We’ve been making some gradual changes to pistol and rifle

Mentions only rifle.*

Uhhhhhhh Gaile?

Also, the only way to make rifle and pistol viable in pvp is to reduce the projectile hate. It is near impossible to fight with either weapon without a kit because of the projectile hate. Engineer is the only class with this many projectiles that cannot do anything about it.

Crinn.7864:

If you’re defining best/worse by strength of bloom effect then sure. Otherwise not really.

Fewer animations, fewer special effects, smaller. TP gliders are better at drawing attention than the legendary backpieces.

Why? What’s the reasoning for this?

Ivantreil.3092:

Then make it similar to Guardian’s invulnerability elite no? grant something at the end of the transformation (in Guardian’s case, they recieve a little heal after they get out)

Well, that’s questionable because it’s the elite skill for a guardian. Elixir S is just a utility. Like I said, I think there’s 2 ways of making it not suck — enable axis to the toolbelt, or make it also grant stealth.

Kaizoku.1298:

Honestly, I wouldn’t call rocket boots with stunbreak AND evade overpowered at all. Gadgets need some serious love

That’s what roll for initiative does.

Just say you want the Freemason spec.

Sheesh.

Ardid.7203:

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

Another question you should ask yourself is: Would elixir S when allowing skills to be cast be fun to play against?

My answer would without hestitation be no.

Is there ANY invulnerability skill that is fun to play against?
Maybe elixir S, because you know you can chase that little rascal and finish him as soon as he de-transform.

Which is why it’s the least valuable invuln… and why eles never carry mist form.

As Jerus said,

In PvE, scrapper is meh. The damage output is low compared to a warrior or thief, and the defensive capabilities are generally only useful in high projectile scenarios (IE Fractals). Core engineer is still quite good though.

In PvP, scrapper is a hell of a tank. And I hear it’s a good roamer in WvW.

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

Vagrant.7206:

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

If you’re talking about utility skills then naaa. Eles mistform can’t use skills while in it.
Besides we got tons of blocks.

As a matter of fact I’d like to see other invuln skills work as our elixir s rather than the other way around.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Obsidian_Flesh

Eles have two invuln skills available to them. Obsidian flesh lets them keep doing their thing, and it’s not even a utility either.

nd how many blocks do eles have or even have that fits builds that are efficient nowadays? Stealth?

This is a problem when people are comparing skills, they never take into consideration the classes as a whole.

Another question you should ask yourself is: Would elixir S when allowing skills to be cast be fun to play against?

My answer would without hestitation be no.

I’m not saying all skills should be allowed.

I’m saying that as it is, elixir S does not serve its purpose of saving the engineer’s life. It tends to doom the engineer. I see two fixes to this:

1) Allow toolbelt skills while in shrunk mode.
2) Make Elixir S provide both protection and stealth. This would fit in with its toolbelt skill.

Sarahfull.4930:

Didn’t they stop that because of the SD builds? You would elixir s in front of their face and roll your face over your toolbelt skills and kill them with your burst

Yeah, that was the primary reasoning, although engi bursts have never been that powerful. Back then, if you were running condi, you couldn’t stack conditions besides bleed, just timers. Power engis back then were grenadiers, which wasn’t bad at the time, but also not optimal.

That said, they have not updated the skill since that meta, making it much weaker against the current meta which can do heavy pressure more consistently.

Yeah, I’ve noticed this as well.

It’s not technically a bug because thrown elixirs are indeed projectiles. The problem is that most thrown elixirs are intended to be buffs… not attacks (with the exception of elixir X), and the point of reflects is to stop attacks. ANet should probably change thrown elixirs to be slightly different — either not considered projectiles, or something like a spray as suggested.

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

If you’re talking about utility skills then naaa. Eles mistform can’t use skills while in it.
Besides we got tons of blocks.

As a matter of fact I’d like to see other invuln skills work as our elixir s rather than the other way around.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Obsidian_Flesh

Eles have two invuln skills available to them. Obsidian flesh lets them keep doing their thing, and it’s not even a utility either.

Engy used to have access to their f1-f4 skills in elixir S also, but that went, and elixir S never got updated to cope with that change (typical Anet), which turned it into the worst invurn in the game, because so often it does nothing but delay the inevitable, because you can’t escape/open a gap much of the time or recover a little whilst invurn like you can with mistform and you can’t counter pressure either in the way obsidian flesh, or endure pain (yes I know that is only direct damage) do.

We also used to be able to use our utility skills in elixir s, which was wonky with kits, but not unreasonable. I feel like the toolbelt skills would be a good compromise — if you have elixir s, you can also throw elixir s if it’s not on cooldown to get the hell away.

The other thing is that endure pain is basically a temp invuln — if you throw in berserker stance, it’s one of the longest temp invulns in the game. Builds are typically specced to power or condis, and endure pain/berserker stance makes you completely immune to some people’s builds.

The problem is right now, it’s not a pressure safety valve as it was intended to be.

While not every class has an invuln skill (IE thief), many classes do. All classes that have a temp invuln skill are able to use other skills while invulnerable. Engineer is the only one that can’t, and it really shows in pvp — rather than discouraging players from attacking or switching targets, instead it acts as a huge encouragement for enemies to attack, as engineers rarely can heal or defend themselves after elixir s pops.

Instead of being a lifesaving skill in pvp, it’s often a death knell. Please consider changing it to be more useful.