Guild Wars 2

Flamethrower has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. One of which is the feeble condition (1s buring) for such a long animation. (Several Eng skills suffer from poor return for time spent perfoming them.)

1s Burning every FT hit would be overpowered.
Better would be 1s Burning on hits 1, 4, 7 and 10 – giving a total of 4s Burning.

Very occasionally Alt-swapping is necessary in a dungeon (e.g. try doing AC path 3 without enough raw DPS in the party). But in such cases the solution is to bring in a higher-level alt, not a lower-level one.

Swapping to a lower-level alt in a dungeon is an exploit.

Don’t forget we can pull them to us when we’re downed too!

(I finally got some decent use out of downed #skills in a dungeon today. But only because we were fighting a single melee-only boss and I could wait for the #3 to come off cooldown and then interrupt followed by knockback. Course I was still down, but it helped the party.)

Better to bundle them into a Turret kit (with a single toolbelt skill) and free up the utility slots.

lepri.6504:

Azimuth.7091:

3. Speedy Kits, endless combos. with this one trait mix with others you can also get. perma swiftness vigor regeneration and might stacks,

Please enlighthen this poor soul how you stack mights with speedy kits

Speedy Kits doesn’t stack Might itself. However, with the Juggernaut trait the flamethrower can give constant might (albeit only a few stacks) provided you keep switching back to it – which you’ll do anyway if you run Speedy Kits.

No question, it has to be Asura: Underpowered guy with a ton of attitude = Engineer every time!
That, and they get the best lines.

Otaur.9268:

If you saw the recent state of the game discussion. Ele being nerfed, Engineer’s being worked on.

So there is hope.

+1

That P/P Elixir build is pretty much what I used for levelling – it worked fine. At higher levels I changed from Condition to more Power/Precision/Crit damage equipment as I found conditions tended to get lost in zergs (other people’s less effective conditions would push mine off the stack).

The big mistake I made in levelling was that I didn’t play much with kits and am now having to catch up on learning about the strongest aspects of the Engineer (not least because these are required to get the Eng perform anywhere as good as other classes), so it’s good you’re looking at a kit based build.

Regarding your FT build, I’m currently playing around with a similar build and while it’s much harder work to play it performs better than the P/P/Elixir build I was using. I’d suggest the following for this build:

• Drop Infused Precision (Firearms 10) for Precise Sights (mass stacks of vulnerability with the FT #1), Hair Trigger (quicker cooldowns on rifle) or Rifled Barrels (longer range on rifle, harpoon gun, and Elixir Gun if you take that). With Speedy Kits and Kit Refinement you can have swiftness up almost all the time just from kit swapping, add Elixir B and you have effectively perma-Swiftness, all of which makes Infused Precision redundant.
• Hot swap between Backpack Regen (Alchemy 20) and Deadly Mixture when out of combat depending on whether you want a more defensive or more aggressive build.
• Consider dropping one of your elixirs for another kit, as that build is better traited for Kits than Elixirs. As well as allowing more synergies both personally and when grouped, this will also free up your options for the Alchemy 10 trait. The Elixir Gun, while not a strong kit (though it sounds like the Devs are looking at this, which is why I suggest it) is already traited in that build and stacks conditions, has some CC, an area regeneration toolbelt skill and a Light field (#5 Super Elixir which spawns on swap with Kit Refinement – you’ll use this a lot). Then there’s Grenades for ranged (and currently the Eng’s best performing kit at any range!), Tool Kit for melee, and Bombs for closer range combos. There’s also the Mortar, but no-one seems to use that.

Thanks for dropping this into the forum.

I love the optimism expressed in their answers:
“We said the engineer is very complex because his complexity limit is very high, but you could run an engineer with simpler utility skills and fewer kits which would make it a relatively straightforward class.”

“I see the question a lot where people ask whether an engineer can be played without kits, and if so won’t they just be weaker? And the answer is no, they will just play very differently.”

“When something random happens as the engineer, and you get the swiftness boon because you drank Elixir B, it becomes a case of “Ok, I was just shooting around but these guys are running away from me, here I go!” and you can use your flamethrower to chase enemies down.”

NevirSayDie.6235:

Toolbelt skills currently have a bug with skill queueing, meaning that if you press a toolbelt skill a microsecond before your previous skill finished casting, it won’t go. Med kit also has an unintended mechanic of canceling skill 1 if you press any other skills before it’s finished casting.

Thanks, that explains some of the problems.

Still needed is why switching to a kit, firing a skill, then switching to another kit often doesn’t work – the skill fails to fire or the second kit swap doesn’t occur.
Do you have to wait for the skill animation to finish before swapping to another kit?

Seetoo.9316:

As for targeting, it doesn’t matter if you have auto target or not. Hold the right mouse button to lock your camera to where you are facing and you will be fine.

What Seetoo said (except for stationery objects which required double left click to target successfully).

FT#1 – Much improved after the patch. Good work so far, Devs … Now please complete the job of fixing this.

FT#2 Why can’t we detonate this, instead of having to wait out its range? Seems like something that got forgotten in the rush to get GW2 out. Also, why no cond on this?

FT#3 – Pushback on a (nearly) melee weapon! Needs brief stun or knockdown.

FT#4 – Weak but usable. (I’ve noticed that the angle is adjustable, but only if you have the time to position it accurately.)

FT#5 Really needs to be a combo field. Seems to be another oversight that it isn’t.

My Eng doesn’t stop moving yet hits almost all the time with the flamethrower.

Once you’ve got your targeting options set right, try the following:

1. When strafing/kiting to the left, aim a bit to the right of the target, and vica versa (takes a bit to get the hang of moving this way, as strafing/kiting now requires using the back key as well to maintain distance relative to your enemy, but it makes the FT hit almost all the time)
2. spam the 1 key (this keeps the flame going even when the AI loses targeting and drops the auto attack – the aoe does most of the rest)
3. You can take out stationery objects by targeting an adjacent mob and letting the aoe do its work (the only time the targeting AI seems to work for stationery objects)
4. When targeting a stationery object only, double-click the left mouse button (to auto aim at the target) and don’t move.

Dropping a bomb on switch to Med Kit is just wrong – not least because it can pull you into combat mode when you are taking steps to be out of it. All the other Kit Refinements are consistent with the kit concerned, but not the Med Kit refinement.

The Kit Refinement for Med Kit needs to be an ability related to healing/survival not generating more agro. Something like dropping an Elixir H or generating a Healing Mist (as per the Healing Turret toolbelt skill) would be far, far better.

tigirius.9014:

what we need is for kits to be a F7-F9 system.

QFT

LieutenantGoogle.7326:

Engineers can’t hit the arrow carts in the back of walls in WvW
:C no answers there except with a laughable poke with supply crate.

Correction:

If you like having an answer for every situation (except well placed siege weapons in WvW) and will put the work in to achieve that, play the Engineer.

This is a consequence of the best end-game equipment being more accessible via the BLTP than any other part of the game.

How to get the best end-game equipment (or its bottleneck components) in GW2, in descending order of accessibility:

1. BLTP trading
2. Zomoros lottery (low probability)
3. RNG drop during play (extremely low probability)

For as long as it is easier (currently far easier) to get the best end-game equipment by trading rather than actually playing GW2, then this significant (and highly visible) part of the market will be dominated by the machinations of traders rather than active GW2 players.

Roll on the day when, instead of being dominated by trading (or framing+trading) for gold, the path to achieving the best end-game equipment in GW2 is through actual gameplay. (After all that’s what we came here for: a really fun MMORPG. That’s right isn’t it, ArenaNet?)

Grackleflint.4956:

On team composition: Ele’s are strong? Huh…we run 5 Engineers. Maybe that’s why we suck so bad.

I really dislike the profession devs.

Given the Dev’s a break – they said exactly the right thing!
Imagine if they’d said “Huh … we run 5 Engineers and we rock!”

Far from Engineers being ignored by the Devs:

1. The Devs are actively playing Engineers.
2. They’re familiar enough with the problems with Engineers to joke about it publicly.

This is the best news I’ve heard about the prospects for the Engineer class, yet. The more the Dev’s play Engs and the more they joke about their failings, the more love we can expect the Engineer class to get.

Go the Dev’s and their all Engineer team!

+1 for a Wrench icon

Xae.7204:

On the bright side a bit further in they talk about changing non-grenade kits. Particularly toolkit and Elixir gun, but give no details.

Excellent.

1. Engineers are a lot of fun to play!

2. Playing an Engineer is hard work – fun, but hard work.

3. Other classes generally kill things faster than Engineers do.

It all depends on what you want from the game:

• If you want to play the most fun class in GW2, play the Engineer.
• If you want a quick route to power in GW2, play another class.
• If you want every combat to be an exciting combination of wits, skill and reflexes, play the Engineer.
• If you want straightforward gameplay, play another class.
• If you like having an answer for every situation and will put the work in to achieve that, play the Engineer.

Q: What to use for levelling? Dual Pistols? Pistol & Shield? Rifle?
A: All of the above!

The Engineer doesn’t shine until its weapon abilities are combined with its many kit/utility/toolbar skills. The only way to find the combination(s) that best suits your play style is to try out as many of them as you can with each of the weapon options. And given how many options the engineer has, this will take a decent chunk of your levelling time.

(FYI, I made the mistake of finding a weapon set I liked – dual pistols – and then sticking with it while I rushed to get to L80. I wish now that I’d made more use of that time trying out other combinations. Now I’m having to go back and experiment with things I could/should have tried while I was levelling.)

Absolutionis.9427:

Jon Peters on Engineer when asked about the class:

• They’re looking at Engineer kits.
• Grenades are fine.
• They’re focusing on bringing things up to viability right now.

At least the Devs are looking at something, even if the only thing they mentioned was kits (and the latest update did help a lot with these).

Focussing on bringing things up to viability = Yeah!

After they’re done with kits I hope they look at the rest of the engineer, we really need work in the following areas:
- Weapons (fix the pistol rate and remove the self stun on rifle – How hard can those be?)
- Elixirs (scrap the RNG and apply Elixir traits to the Elixir Gun)
- Turrets (fix survivability and cool downs so they’re viable at higher levels – even better, make them a Turret Kit)
- Traits (scrap the worthless ones and replace them with ones that let us trait effectively across more kit/utility combinations)

John Smith.4610:

The oddly straight lines we see sometimes are caused by bugs in the graphing, not a lack of trading.

Thanks, John. I was wondering if that was the case.

Time for an Engineer to join the economics debate!

Assuming the chart provided by Death Reincarnated is accurate, that straight line on the graph between approx Thurs 10pm and Fri 8am is more than just unusual. Seeing this chart, I can understand the OP’s speculation that something may have been manipulating the market during this period.

The graph shows a persistent level of noise which appears to be absent during teh period from ~10pm Thurs to ~8am Friday. There is a chance that this could be a statistical anomaly, but that chance is extremely low, given the noise exhibited across the rest of the chart (and all the other BLTP market data charts I’ve seen) and the number of data points involved.

The chart also shows 1) that the price jumped approx 15s at or immediately to ~10pm Thurs, and b) from there the price increased at an apparently regular rate of ~0.5s/hour until ~8am Fri. After that period the price (which was now ~20s higher than the evening before) jumped by a further ~8s and traded at that level for a couple of hours before correcting back to the level it was teh day before.

Assuming the chart is correct and the data presented is not a statistical anomaly however unlikely, the following inferences that can be made from the data presented:
1) at around approx 10pm Thurs something caused the market price to jump approx 15s
2) between ~10pm Thurs and ~8am Friday something overrode the noise normally exhibited in the market data
3) while the noise was absent from the market data, something caused the price to climb at a steady rate of ~0.5s/hour
4) at ~8am Friday noise returned to the market data at which point the price jumped by a further ~8s for a couple of hours, before dropping ~28s to the level of the day before.

Which begs the following questions:
1. What caused the price to jump by ~15s around 10pm Thurs?
2. What caused the normal trading noise to be absent from the data from ~10pm Thurs to ~8am Friday?
3. What caused the price to increase by ~0.5s/hour during that same period?

[Begin speculation] If anything, it looks like something overrode the market that night, driving the trading price up by ~20s, and the market responded the next morning by trading ~8s higher still for a couple of hours, before collapsing back to the price levels of the previous day. [End speculation]

(Disclaimer: No, I’m not an economist. Then again, economists generally don’t get much training on signal processing which is the basis for the assessment above.)

There are two very different stories about Engineers that get posted on these forums.

• On one hand we have videos and posts from people confirming how their Engineer can chew up and spit out pretty every other class, up to and including 1v3 fights.
• On the other hand we have lots of complaints about Engineers being underpowered compared with other classes.

Underlying that first group of posts is the message:
Engineers are awesome if you just learn how to play them properly.

So why isn’t that message working?

It seems to me the problem is that the Engineer class is far harder to ‘learn to play properly’ than all other classes (with the possible exception of the Elementalist), and that this is detrimental both to the class and to Guild Wars 2.

The people who master Engineers are comfortable manipulating the massive range of key press chains/combinations required to make the most of the massive flexibility available to engineers. Using long chains (6+) of carefully-timed and constantly-adapted keystrokes these Elite players can get their Engineers to outplay pretty much anything. As a result, they a) love their Engineers, and b) post about how they regularly outperform every other class.

The people who find Engineers underpowered seem to be players comfortable only with key press chains/combinations of the length (~3) and complexity (simple repeated combinations) required by other classes. These far more common players (Average players) often enjoy playing the Engineer class, but are unable to get it to perform to the level of other classes they play, with the result that they complain that the engineer is underpowered.

The problem is that while Elite players can get their Engineers to outperform everyone else, they represent only a very small (but highly skilled) subset of the people who play or want to play engineers. For the majority of people (i.e. those with average skill levels) who play or want to play Engineers, this class is weak relative to the other classes they play.

The result: the most fun class to play in Guildwars2 proves disappointing in practice for the majority of players.

ArenaNet have a huge asset in the Engineer class (Who doesn’t want to play a really fun class in a great MMO?), but it needs some love at the average skill level to shift its play experience from underwhelming to equitable for the majority of players.

How to do this?
Not sure, but a bit of balancing to make non-kit builds (turrets, elixirs, etc.) more viable would be a good start, as this would allow people who haven’t mastered dynamic kit swapping to at least get average performance out of their engineers.

A golem uprising? Now that would be an interesting experiment…

Great message . . . and it just confirms that Engs are a great class for elite players.

If you’re at the top end of the player skill range, then engineers can be awesome.

If you’re a more average player then accept that while fun, your engineers are likely to be less effective than other classes you play.

The problem with Engs being so skill sensitive is that balancing for the elite can easily result in debilitating nerfs for the rest of us (as we’ve seen repeatedly). Kudos to ANet, in this latest update, for patching Engineers in a way that addresses a chunk of their weakness for average players without overpowering them for the highly skilled.

BTW, Markus, can you let us know the build you find so effective?

Great idea!
This would be fun and balance out the deficiencies of turrets.

Now if Anet could find another solution to turrets being used as exploits that doesn’t involve nerfing them…

Engineers are fun to play.

Fun? Yes.
Awesome? No.

If you want your Engineer to perform as well as other classes, then you have to work a lot, lot harder (much steeper/longer learning curve and many more button presses required to achieve the same results). But they are fun to play (in part because you have to become a master at avoiding damage) and you have sooo many options for how you build and play your Eng (even identical Eng builds can seem very different in the hands of different players).

So, absolutely, enjoy your Eng – they may not be quite as powerful, but they are fun to play.

p.s. Deniara, you summed up the gap between Engineer and other classes beautifully with this statement:

Warrior is my main profession. Everytime I switch from my engineer to my warrior it feels like somebody turned on the “easy mode”. So much better damage, so much better survivability and much less key presses required to do the same.

Excellent summary, Specterryu, and good suggestions for how to resolve them (I might change some of those myself, but that’s as much personal taste as anything and what you’ve provided looks good).

I use rifle turret in PvE to draw off some agro (for a couple of seconds anyway) and tag a few more mobs for xp/loot (not exploiting, just when I’m active). It’s a bit like a Ranger’s pet, except far lower DPS, much shorter life, no mobility, no control, pathetic AI (or worse, broken AI) and worse cooldown. It doesn’t make much difference, but with Eng you have to milk everything you’ve got – the sec or two of distraction while a mob agros on the turret can mean the diff between life and death.

Thanks, very helpful post.

Kardiamond.6952:

Yeah I don’t see a lot of people using this GM master trait, it’d always a surprise when I witness it.

Automated Response increased my survival rate in heavy combat situations significantly when I switched to it, as it drastically reduces HP loss when health is low and #6 is on recharge.

The Alchemy trait line doesn’t do a lot for DPS but has some nice rewards for survivability. E.g. 30 pts gives extra vitality, +30% boon duration and a further +20% on elixirs (Fast Acting Elixirs), 20% shorter cooldown on elixirs (Potent Elixirs), and Automated Response (swap out for HGH =extra Might in zergs).

My main is an Asura Engineer – great fun, really enjoyed it.

Two things to be aware of:
1. The average engineer is underpowered compared with other classes. To get engineers to perform at the same level you have to master multiple kits and actively swapping them on the fly in play – something that most players (including myself) don’t seem to manage. Expect to have to work harder for less reward than you do with other classes.
2. The Asura engineer gear (turrets, kits, etc) all look like they was designed by Charr – there’s no Asura aesthetic for the Engineer. Sylvari get plant turrets, but the master engineers, Asura, have to use gear borrowed from the Charr! (ArenaNet, please do some Asura models/skins for the engineer gear.)

The biggest problem with staff is how often #1 misses if used while turning.
After that, need to make #5 Line of Warding stop dodges, etc (ditto for other classes movement restriction skills), and allow moving while casting #4 (3.5s of no movement for Empower is excessive) and #5.

Alternating between getting the last 10% world completion for my Eng and levelling a Guardian.

The Guardian is sooooooo much easier/tougher/more powerful than my Eng – everything dies faster, his health stays higher and he can solo groups several levels higher than the Eng ever could.

One benefit of starting with an Eng – I’m better at keeping my Guardian alive if/when he does get in too far over his head.

Top bugs that need fixing:
1 – Weapons buffs on kits (being worked on)
2 – Cone attacks missing (not just for Engs)
3 – Deployable turrets
4 – Broken traits

Monk would be great.

As would a real Shape-shifter/Nature mage class.

Tolmos.8395:

You should have seen this game prior to November 15th, 2012. It was absolutely amazing. The difference in the tone of the forums, the population of the zones and the distribution of the players compared to how it is now, where everyone is grind grind grinding for their new gear in fractals, is almost unbelievable. :-\

QFT.

I think Fractals broke Tyria by creating a separate effectively unrelated world with its own progression path and better gear.
- Want to explore, like story, and don’t mind having a less powerful character? Play in Tyria.
- Want to keep increasing the power of your character? Leave Tyria and go to the Fractals (or spend your time working the TP).

Fortunately, there are still people out in Tyria (but that may be because I’m lucky enough to be on Tarnished Coast server which has a high proportion of RP’ers and explorers).

At least 100% map completion is still a big deal. If it wasn’t for that . . .

Fiorrello.8126:

my experience with the engineer is that . . .

it has too high a skill requirement for the level of return you get.

I think that’s the problem with the engineer: the pinnacle of GW2 engineer performance is only attainable by a few (and their success gets the engineer nerfed for the rest of us).

To get an engineer to perform at the level of other classes requires both a) an encyclopaedic knowledge of the options available to engineers and how to combine them, and b) the skill to do this swapping and combining in the heat of battle. The majority of players don’t have this level of dedication and skill.

My guess is most people who play engineers do so because they like the idea (as opposed to the design concept) of the Engineer class and they just want it to perform about as well as other classes (including their alts). As it stands, in the hands of the average player (i.e. most of us) engineers are disappointing.

What to do about this?
One idea would be to tweak some traits to strengthen engineers but only when they are not using any kits or are using only a single kit.
This would create two build paths for engineers: 1) the original version with all its flexibility, and 2) a simpler, less flexible version that is better balanced for the average player.

I love playing my engineer. I love grouping with others. What I don’t like is not pulling my weight in a group. And being an engineer that happens far too often.

I’ve learned to not say my class when lfg for a dungeon – because if I do suddenly they’re waiting for a guildie to show up to complete the party. Some groups are power snobs – their loss. But something’s needed when one class gets regularly overlooked for grouping.

Brinson.7289:

Tell us one reason a group would want an engineer for their 5th if they could pick any other class?

QFT (if you can QFT a question – lol)

The problem is the excessive cooldown times on turrets. Reduce the cooldowns to a more balanced level and turrets will be get more use again without being overpowered.

I’ve been using a crit based pistol/pistol build (30 Firearms for piercing, plus mght and power on sigils, and elixirs for protection and escape) as a supporting character in WvW and have been doing just fine.
(Would prob get even more kills if I mixed elixir U and S for fast stomps, but I prefer a more general mix of abilities.)

p.s. Biggest problem is I have to keep mobile and often miss the loot bags from my own kills.

I gave up on a condition build and switched to a crit build with sigils for might and extra power. (FYI, 30 in Firearms rocks for pistols as it gives you access to 20% faster recharge, longer range and piercing.)

This is working better than the cond build for soloing and skirmishes in WvW (and PvE), and a lot better in zergs and mass events.

Isslair.4908:

I think that warrior need to have shotgun, while engi gets the sniper rifle.

This is more fair. Cause warrior has more hp and armor AND longer rifle range. Really no logic in this.

And they can swap between rifle and close range weapons in combat.

I use elixirs, but only for their dependable effects. The rest is in the “Oh, what the hell, lets give it a shot – there’s a small chance it might actually help” category. If I use them for a random effect its either because a) I’m desperate and will give anything a go however unlikely, or b) the fight is a done deal and I may as well throw some elixirs around just for fun.

The slow throw animation for elixirs really sucks, though. I end up using my toolbelt elixirs selfishly simply because that’s the only way to be sure the time spent throwing them ends up being useful. If the ally I really want to help happens to be in the right place when the elixir lands, all the better.

Now if the thrown elixirs granted a second boon for a shorter time, that would make them useful (as there’d be 2/3 chance of getting something you wanted, even if only for a very short time) and make those tool belt slots worthwhile.

Hongxing.9528:

I came back…just to say…I’ve made it!!!!

Spent about 3hrs on the first day, 3 hrs the day before, and 1hr yesterday which finally, successfully jumped into the box!!!!

Such joy!!!!

Understand the delight at completing it.

What about the 7 hours it took to get there? Were they ‘fun’? Can you honestly say you enjoyed them?