Engineers are fun. They’re just very hard to play at anywhere near the effectiveness of other classes, and most of the promotional material about Engs is overstated.
I was attracted to the Engs by the promotional material which, IIRC, emphasised turrets, the FT and kits. Despite really wanting turrets to work, as my Eng levelled he ran with less and less turrets, to the point that so far this year he’s only used a turret a couple of very predictable PvE times. The FT was disappointing for a long time – it was improved in the latest patch but is still mediocre.
. . . It turns out ANet have redone the promo material for Engs. Now it features:
- Weapon Kits (reasonable)
- Backpack Kits (the best of which is actually a weapon kit)
- Turrets (we live in hope)
- (NB: there’s no more mention of Gadgets. Are they a lost cause for now?)
The new promo videos are:
- Rifle Turret (Every shot is an instant kill. Detonate insta-kills an ogre. Yeah, right!)
- Jump Shot (promoted as battlefield speed boost, gap closer and killer all in one. The first two I can get . . .)
- Grenade Satchel (the example is a grenadiers dream: 5 enemies at distance that move only in a straight line and stay grouped despite being repeatedly hit by predictable AoE. At least this one promotes a truly viable kit.)
- Glue Shot (Poison Darts, Glue Shot and Big Ol Bomb. Feasible, against AI anyway, apart from the error on the glue stun.)
It’s only benefit is it’s zero cast, so it costs nothing to use for a quick blind it if/when it’s up.
As for being a worthwhile #5 – like you said the low benefit and long CD dones;t make sense. The latest patch did improve the FT, but it was from such a low base that it still has a bit further to go. Its #5 skill being the most obvious area needing improvement.
@Deified
You may be confused by expecting Engs to perform at the same raw level as other classes. Eng’s aren’t designed to do that, we’re simply not meant to be as strong as other classes. Instead, we’re meant to be masters of flexibility; we’re meant to be more able than any other class to adapt to whatever situations we encounter.
Part of the problem is that our major trait paths heavily define how we allocate our utility slots, and vica versa:
- Explosives: Grenades and Bombs
- Firearms: weapons and/or FT and EG
- Inventions: Turrets (though why bother atm?)
- Alchemy: Elixirs (or if you go to 20 FT and EG)
- Tools: Tool Kit
What’s more, we need to invest heavily in the relevant lines and trait choices to make our weapons and utilities effective, so our builds rarely have much in the way of spare points or unallocated traits. The result is that after making the core of an Eng build work, we have little if anything left to address its weaknesses.
TLDR: We do often end up with more options in play than other classes. But we pay a performance tax for the privilege. Try to compensate for that and you end up with the problems you observed.
Please fix this Anet, it’s a serious nerf for Asura Eng’s.
. . .
Plus the Dev’s should have to play each class at L80 in all three parts of GW2: PvP, WvW and PvE.
Rewarding WvW activity is a good thing. Doing it in a way that widens the gap between experienced WvW’ers and non-experienced WvW’ers isn’t, because it discourages new players. NB: this doesn’t sound like it’s rewarding better play, only that it’s buffing character’s based on tenure.
We already have this problem with Fractals: the longer Fractal progression was around, the harder it was for new players to even start in Fractals. In the end ANet had to patch that, and even then there’ still a gap.
When you do this ANet, make sure the effect is minor, not discouraging for new characters.
There are a number of great videos out there of Engs kicking butt in WvW. What’s telling is that, outside the Eng elite, the responses are all along the lines of “Wow. Great play”, not “Nice. But I do that too!” – which says something about the skill level required to achieve that level of performance with an Eng in WvW.
Eng’s can be great WvW solo’ers. But to achieve that you probably have to play at least as well, probably better than you would with other classes.
Eng’s do work well as adaptable support/complement to other classes in WvW. You’ll almost never be the star, much of what you contribute will not be really obvious to other players (“That large collection of boons that appeared on my character just when I needed it? No, the Eng didn’t cause those.”), and you’ll have to be careful with some of your abilities (“Who pushed the enemy away just as I was firing up my melee spike routine?”). However, you will be worthwhile contributor in a group in WvW . . . Then again so are most of the other classes.
If you do run an Eng in WvW the consistent advice is master the Tool Kit (for its pull and its confusion stacks) and the Grenade Kit (for its ranged AoE).
(edited by Zenguy.6421)
Typifies some of the engineer core design problems, our weapons are weak because we have kits or similar faulty reasoning, and our kits are weak because they’re not weapons.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the last one.
QFT
4 kit build – Yeah!
You could get even more out of that build by making more use of combos http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo
With Bomb Kit, Grenade Kit and the Short Fuse trait you can lay down a nearly constant stream of Fire, Smoke and Poison fields. You have blast finishers on both your shield skills and Big ol Bomb, plus there’s the 20% chance of a projectile finisher with every pistol #1 shot. Be in the radius for the blast finishers (or your foe in the radius for the Poison combo) or shoot through the field with pistol #1 to get the combo effect.
The reasonable list;
- Buff our #2 downed skill or replace it with something helpful outside TPvP.
- Remove the self-knockdown on Rifle #5 Overcharged Shot and on the Rocket Boots gadget.
- Reduce the cooldowns on turrets and gadgets.
- Remove/reduce the RNG on thrown elixirs.
- Give us a second credible Elite (Buff Elixir X and remove its RNG; buff the Mortar).
- Replace the cooldowns on Kit Refinement with a single global cooldown across all kits and balance the KR effects for each kit (i.e. Med Kit proc needs a condition cleanse, heal and/or water field; Bomb Kit proc needs a buff; reduce duration of KR Super Elixir effect for the Elixir Gun).
- Make FT#4 Napalm a radius effect and make it apply some damage on landing.
- Make the rifle range at least equal to our grenades range. (We currently throw grenades further than we can shoot with a rifle – go figure.)
And finally, a wish item:
- Make at least one kit skill a stun breaker (e.g. FT #3 Air Blast or #5 Smoke Screen, either of which makes sense practically as a stun breaker and is also 0s cast).
(edited by Zenguy.6421)
Super Hyperbeam Alpha – that’s real nice on an Asura.
Where do you get it? Is it craftable?
(edited by Zenguy.6421)
Yeah, but you’re forgetting it has a massive 3 minute cooldown, only as much healing as a regular heal skill, and the couple turrets die easy as hell.
Sometimes, that’s all you need. Sometimes you need an extra stun to keep that guy from running away in wvw. Sometimes you need a quick heal when your heal skill and elixer small is in cd. Sometimes, you need the boss to target the turrets giving you that precious 3-5 seconds (slow mob attack ftw) until you can do what you need to do.
That’s not a lot from a skill with such a large cooldown.
c.f. Guardian’s Renewed Focus which gives 3s Invulnerability (to everything whether it switches agro or not) and refreshes their Aegis/Might/Burning/Healing virtues, and all this happens twice as often as we get Supply Crate.
Still, Supply Crate is our best Elite . . .
I settled on dual pistols while levelling and found the following helped a lot:
- Learn to watch the enemies animations and dodge their major attacks (not specific to pistols, but is a key mechanic to learn as dodging is the biggest damage reducer in GW2)
- If you find yourself getting downed too often replace low level gear with better stuff from the TP – upgrading this way is surprisingly cheap and you’ll find even better gear as yo level so don’t be too worried about your choice.
- Invest trait points in Firearms, it gives both precision (more criticals + bleeding = more damage) and extra condition damage, and the Hair Trigger trait (20% faster pistol recharge) will greatly increase your effective pistol damage and condition output
- For armor and weapon stats focus on Precision (for crits), Power (for raw damage output), Condition Damage and Condition Duration (for increased condition damage). I started by focussing on Precision/Condition items but eventually swapped to more Power/Precision as it proved more effective overall (at higher levels anyway) due to the greater upfront damage – this was most noticeable when doing events with others as my high value condition damage would get diluted by their low value cond damage.
The kits are weapons – even sigils recognize this.
Apart from Med Kit which isn’t a weapon set. But that makes sense as it’s switching from attacker to medic. (Except for its Kit Refinement, which is a blast! – wtf.)
The nerf to kit refinement was minor for Grenade or Tool kit builds, because the global cooldown isn’t triggered by those kits (although the release notes say it should be). But if it had been fully implemented . . .
FYI, The internal cooldown for Kit Refinement on the EG is 20s. There are reports that switching to the EG after the 10s global cooldown expires, but before the EG specific cooldown expires retriggers the KR global cooldown. (I’ve yet to test this myself.)
That’ll be why it’s doing so much damage atm to enemies at max range. Shame really, because with that the FT is doing reasonable damage.
If/when they do fix this I hope they make it explode when it hits a solid object, cause atm it disappears into solid walls if you don’t detonate it in time.
Even better get them to try WvW with a non-Asura Eng and an Asura Eng and see the difference in what they can do when they drink Elixir S.
And it seems to be the only burst Eng build . . . so figure out how to avoid it.
Good summary in the OP.
As a solo performer the Eng is challenged (yes, I know some people can play Eng’s the way Hendrix did guitars – but most people aren’t Jimi Hendrix).
I’m finding the engineer seems best suited to supporting others (after the latest patch, this now includes supporting other engineers, so that’s a step in the right direction). This means the party can shine. However it takes a while for Eng’s to learn how best to support other players. And even when they do the other players have to be mature enough to realise that, although the Eng in the party may not be racking up a big kill tally, the Eng is helping the rest of the party to do that.
The gist of all this is the Eng has a long learning curve, and even when mastered they are still at their best supporting other players (with the exception of 100nades builds which seem to be the only Eng solo dps build).
Yesterday I was in Wayfarer Foothils and Diessa Plateau doing Living Story events using the FT as my main weapon. Scaled down to low level zones the combination of damage, burning and CC on the FT worked fine against massed mobs.
What sucked was that whenever I soloed events on a slope the FT would only damage the portal or Dredge personnel carrier by accident (i.e. when hitting another mob) and even then the hits were rare. I’d clear out the mobs and then spend the time till the next respawn trying to get the FT to hit the portal or carrier – and missing every single time. In each case this went on for so long that b) other people eventually turned and killed the object for me (bad look for engineers), and b) I got so many respawns I quickly racked up the 150 event kills required for the Gathering Storm achievement.
I noticed a big difference going into some sections of Fireheart Rise at the prescribed level and then going back at L80 to complete the map. The areas that caused me trouble first time round were way easier when downleveled from 80.
Firstly, check you’ve got level appropriate gear, especially armour – that extra toughness is less damage you have to sustain. Don’t be afraid to buy what you need from the TP – you can get decent stuff for surprisingly little there.
The mobs that caused me the most trouble first item round generated a lot of burning and in some cases were immune to burning themselves. When facing these try rifle (more CC) and Elixir C (don’t forget its toolbelt skill).
Check it in SPvP and if it’s bugged there as well, then post it as a bug in the SPvP forum – you’re far more likely to get a rapid response posting there than here.
@RaynStargaze
Great work.
More evidence that the latest patch didn’t balance Kit Refinement, it broke it. :-(
@ArenaNet
Kit Refinement is now broken and needs fixing. If you need to prevent KR from spamming multiple effects in less than a second, then replace the Global Cooldown on specific kits with a 1s or 2s GCD that is only triggered when a KR effect procs. If the problem is that some KR effects are too powerful, then balance those.
It seems to work as follows:
- Only the EG and FT trigger the global cooldown (at present).
- If triggered, the global cooldown blocks the KR effect for all kits.
- The global cooldown can be triggered even when the KR effect does not proc due to the kit-specific cooldown being active (currently only occurs on the EG with its 20s internal KR cooldown).
- Other kits do not trigger the KR global cooldown (but are affected by it if it’s active).
The effect is a massive nerf to Kit Refinment for users of the Elixir Gun, and to a lesser extent the Flamethrower. Grenade Kit or Tool Kit users are currently affected only if they also use the EG or FT. However the release notes also said both the Grenade Kit and Tool Kit were meant to trigger the global cooldown, so watch this space.
(Think there’s a bit of noise about the KR change now? Just imagine the uproar if/when the implementation covers the Grenade Kit and Tool Kit as well.)
Suggestion:
Remove the kit-specific global cooldown introduced to Engineer’s Kit Refinement trait in the 26 Feb patch, and replace it with 1s (or at most 2s) global cooldown across all kits that occurs only when a Kit Refinement effect actually procs.
Background:
The Engineer’s Kit Refinement trait, which procs an effect when swapping to a Eng Kit, was broken in the 26 Feb patch. The patch added a hidden global cooldown triggered by swapping to a specific kits which occurs even when the Kit Refinement effect itself does not proc. This was on top of the existing hidden cooldowns specific to each kit. This trait now has hidden but overlapping global and specific cooldowns on the Eng equivalent of weapon swapping – try tracking that in combat!
The effect is that the Kit Refinement Trait, which was previously considered the best designed Engineer trait, went from being a logical complement to multi-kit Engineer builds to an unreliable mess in play for these builds. Instead of rewarding kit swapping (which this trait is meant to do), the more an Engineer swaps between kits in combat, the less likely it is that this trait will proc at all.
The only reason why the 26 Feb change to this trait hasn’t caused even greater protest on the Eng forums is that the change wasn’t implemented for the Engineer’s most powerful kit, the Grenade Kit, despite being specified in the release notes that it would do this.
Did the original Kit Refinement need changing?
As originally implemented, in certain builds it was possible to use the Kit Refinement trait to damage, burn and bleed nearby enemies, get an instant 380 heal, remove two conditions and drop a 10s light field with 140/s healing – all in under a second and all without triggering cooldowns on any skills. If not OP in the first place, the fact that this could be repeated every 20s was. Unfortunately, the 26 Feb fix for this was a mess.
About the suggested change
- Applying a 1s (or at most 2s) global global cooldown on all Kit Refinement proc effects (in place of the current broken global cooldown) will prevent the problem of sub-second spamming of multiple effects.
- 1s (or at most 2s) is a short enough global cooldown that it will fit into the rhythm of play and not require players to dedicate specific attention to tracking it. (Kit Refinement already has kit-specific hidden cooldowns up to 20s in duration- that’s more than enough for players to track already.)
- A global cooldown that applies to all Kit Refinement procs is easier for players: If a Kit Refinement effect proc’ed the global cooldown applies. (No more having to track whether or not a particular kit-swap triggered the global cooldown.)
- Applying the global cooldown only when a Kit Refinement effect procs will prevent non-procing kit-swaps from blocking Kit Refinement.
- If, after all this, some Kit Refinement effects are still considered OP then fix that by balancing the relevant Kit Refinement effects themselves only.
Despite running an Elixir build, I gave up on Elixir S because of this bug and resorted to the alternative but inferior Eng stunbreakers. In other words…
This bug kittens the Engineer’s best stun breaker on Asura Engs.
Dropping an overcharged Thumper Turret could work, especially if it’s accelerant-packed.
Incendary Powder’s effectiveness is limited as it has a 3s internal cooldown for a 2s burn. That’s why it requires a source of extra burning to really be effective. Without that burning is only in place at most 2/3 of the time (or less depending on how frequently you crit).
FYI, Flamethrower is not OP in PvE.
Conceptually the most logical kit skill as a stun breaker is the Elixir Gun tool belt Healing Mist.
Alternatives that could make sense as stun breakers are Tool Kit #4 Gear Shield or Flamethrower #5 Smoke Vent.
Just found this little gem https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Packaged-Stimulants-bug/first#post1553034 in the Structured PvP forum. The Engineer bug was posted there and fixed within hours!
Is posting bugs in the sPvP forum the way to get them fixed?
ANet please tell us that that isn’t so. Please tell us that bugs in the rest of the GW2 are just as important as those reported in sPvP.
Someone told me the number of each class created is roughly equal – which means people start about as a many engineers as they do any other class.
Question is, how may get to L80? And when they do, how many get played after that?
A scan through each of the Class forums says that the class patches were generally well received across the board this time around – well done ANet.
There’s the usual griping about someone’s favourite bug/exploit getting fixed and about existing bugs that didn’t get fixed. Outside that normal noise, the responses are low key but positive.
Only the Engineer forum seems genuinely bothered by this patch, and even there the reaction is mixed between positive and upset over a single 10 trait that got nerfed (albeit one that seems to get used in a lot of Engineer builds).
KR needs to be returned to where it was, there was nothing out of balance about the skill. If there is some issue in wvw/pvp with the 100nade thing, the Devs need to stop being lazy and find an appropriate fix relative to the specific issue, not demolish one of our central traits.
This ^
I have said this on most threads I’ve replied, if you think about, it seems that what anet wants to encourage players to stay in kits for longer and design build around those kits like FT or EG, and discourage kit swamping
and even tho the trait is currently broke, i believe this was intentionally so that at a later date they can nerf again and claim it as a bug fix
I’ve learnt to never attribute to cunning what can be put down to inattention.
Kit swapping is the core Engineer mechanism. I doubt very much that ANet was trying to reduce the amount we do that. More likely they thought being able to generate 4 proc effects in less than 0.5s was OP and that they needed to fix that. Unfortunately the ‘fix’ broke the trait.
All they needed to do was put a 1 or 2s global CD on the trait, effectively spreading out the effects over a 4-8s period (much more balanced), and made the EG and GK KT effects a bit weaker. That would have been far better.
Zenguy, I don’t know about you, but its February here.
Lol. Hey, I hadn’t even noticed. Having major health stuff going on with both of my kids and with both of my parents all in the same month can kind of mess up your sense time a bit. Oh look, is it nearly March already?
To be fair though us engineers were clearing the most OP class in the game.
Lol – OP and over-designed, that the Engineer class . . . not!
The change to Kit Refinement means that the reason why I included it my build (liberal use of kit swapping) now becomes a good reason for dropping it – go figure!
I didn’t say it was great, just that even on its own the FT has ways to get the +10% damage vs burning to kick in for most if not all of the flame jet.
FT is handy in PvE, just don’t try to rely on it for all your adventuring needs.
Don’t forget you can drop a #4 Napalm field and get some burning off that, as well as the Toobelt skill which adds burning to your next 3 attacks (even if it is a long cooldown).
Hit the FT toobelt skill immediately before FT#1 and the +10% damage should kick in for most of the approx FT#1 flame (proved the target stays in the flames).
They broke Kit Refinement (KR). :-(
As one of only two traits specifically designed to complement our primary class mechanism ‘kit swapping’, Kit Refinement used to be the strongest argument that the Engineer really was a unique yet coherently designed class, and not merely a miss-match of effects from other classes with a bit of alternative key-binding thrown in.
Here was a trait where both its trigger and its effects were designed around the Eng’s primary class mechanism: kit swapping. As such, KR was the model (the only model) of what an Engineer trait should be – simple, elegant, effective and enjoyable to play, without being OP.
. . . That was, until the 26 Feb patch.
Prior to this patch, KR was a reliable trait on multi kit builds: 1) equip this trait; 2) switch to any kit in play; and 3) provided enough time had passed, an effect related to the kit you swapped to would proc. The more you used the Kit Swapping mechanism the more KR rewarded you with relevant effects (up to a sensible limit). Minor balancing (and the inappropriate Med-Kit KR effect) aside, here was evidence that the disparate components of the engineering class working perfectly in play.
- Kit Refinement was pure Engineering genius . . . until the latest patch.
Now, with the 26 Feb patch, KR actually gets worse (yes, RNG is worse for players) the more you make use of the Engineer’s core mechanism. With the revise KT, the more kit swapping you do in-game, the harder it is to predict which KR effect will proc and when. What was a brilliant piece of class design has been turned into something approaching another kitten RNG! The GW2 Engineer class has just lost its best (and possibly only) evidence of coherent design (no, an RNG is not design, it’s a cop-out).
Kit Refinement was far better before this latest patch. ANet, Please put it back the way it was. And, if its need some balancing then do that, not by messing with the design, but by tweaking each effect or kit specific cooldown.
TLDR: The old Kit Refinement trait was what all Engineer traits should be like. The 26 Feb patch broke it – it needs to be put back the way it was. ANet, tweak the power and/or cooldown of each KR effect if you must, but give us a back the old Kit Refinement trait.
(edited by Zenguy.6421)
Bothers me every time I use it too.
Is it only Asura that have this problem?
Its not my job, nor the communities job to level your characters. If they do so, I would be very thankful and appreciate the generosity. A nicer way to do things is, play a level 80 for the dungeon, switch to a alt character at final boss who is lower level. That way the party is happy, your happy and its a win/win.
This ^
But only if the party is happy with the switch. If they aren’t . . .
As for leveling characters: Are you trying to tell us you got to L80 without anyone helping you out along the way? Yeah, right!
This is a community game – deal with it!
It works and plays best when people help each other. Sometimes that means running around power gaming with other L80s. Other times that means remembering how you got to where you are and giving back a little of the generosity what others gave you. Do that and you might even find GW2 can be even more satisfying than you thought.
(edited by Zenguy.6421)
I’m using kit refinement (tool IV) with elixir gun.
I’m not healed when i’m in the healing area created.
Guild war wiki – kit refinement
i that a bug ?
That’s weird. I’ve was running in Malchor’s Leap with Elixir Gun and Kit Refinement and the heals from the auto Super Elixir were working fine.
Is there a way to automatically target your toon when using a med kit (instead of putting the items on the floor) ?
No. You have to drop the bandages etc., and then run over them yourself.
Not sure about your other questions.
Blindness is cured on the next outgoing attack. With any halfway decent crit chance Go for the Eyes is going to stop only one attack every 10s.
Me, I’d run with the Riffle Mod most of the time, and switch to Go for the Eyes only when I want a more defensive setup.
Move ability 3 to 2, with 2’s timer.
This ^
We can’t run. We can’t hide. But we’re good at blowing stuff up.
Make supply drop the new 3.
Fun . . . but seriously OP.
Now dropping a single turret with a short life, that could be useful.
Which reminds me: ANet, when are you going to replace the useless Always Prepared downed trait with one that might actually be useful to take.
The best part of the bomb kit is its tool belt skill Big ol’ Bomb because it’s quick cast damage, knockback and a blast finisher.
Otherwise, as the OP said, the Bomb Kit just doesn’t seem to do enough to justify that every attack is melee range, delayed and dodgable. I’m running an all kit build that includes the Bomb Kit as the 4th kit, and it’s definitely the least used option. Against moving targets it’s limited help, and it’s really only combo’ing with the blast finisher from Big ol Bomb that gets much use.
If the bombs could be placed and then detonated under user control, now that would be useful.
Fixing the fire rate on the pistol would be a good start.
Agree. We need more than one viable elite.
We run around more than any other class (except possibly thieves), we get to use a lot of different abilities each combat, our abilities have cool animations and we get to use/see lots of them whenever we play.
I remember the first time my Eng took on a L80 champion with just one other. That was 5 minutes of kiting, dodging, skill swapping, tracking cooldowns and we were actually winning – what a blast. Not very effective compared to other classes perhaps, but a lot of fun.
(Of course, the guardian I was partied with – not the other combatant – had already raided the chest using Aegis and Block and as was on the sidelines wondering why we were wasting time actually fighting the champion.)