Guild Wars 2

Not related to what i said before, but where the heck is our 20% cooldown reduction for our turrets!?

Seriously, this would be a massive boost in turret viability.

I would really like to see bomb kit and ’nade kit have more interesting abilities. They are strong at condi/damage burst because each of them are just 5 abilities of condition stacking and/or damage.

Devs have made it pretty clear that they don’t want gameplay to be just nuking each other down by unloading cooldowns, but they made two kits that can only do just that.

I would love to see more abilities like the magnetic bomb in kit refinement, except as part of the kit instead of a trait that is really awkward to use.

I agree, it is probably just might that is OP. Up around ~20 stacks is a lot of extra stat. The only somewhat special thing about ’nades is that they stack nicely with both the extra power and condition damage.

I agree that soldier’s is a good way to go. Bear in mind that Knight’s gear uses toughness as the main stat, so with soldier gear you will have more pure power. Sharpening stones buff your power based on toughness and vitality levels, so that is even more power there.

Less skill & less benefit.

I would dislike this.

Imagine that you have 10 people all fighting on a point; 5 from one team and 5 from the other. Somehow, everyone manages to kill each other, and in the process each person tagged every enemy and got credit for the kill.

So either team has a net 5 kills and 5 deaths from the encounter. But each individual has credit for 5 kills, and only died once. So while team K:D ratios are 1:1, each individual has a K:D ratio of 5:1.

The point is that tagging means K:D ratios are utterly meaningless for individuals, from being massively over-inflated.

Presumably the rankings are based on something like Elo ratings.

Ran a few timing tests in the mists. Indeed, it does not stack.

I’m very sure it doesn’t, similar to how movement speed buffs (e.g. signets) will not stack with swiftness, so speed is effectively capped at 133%.

Although I can’t find any documentation explicitly stating that.

To be honest, HGH isn’t even that good on its own. It’s the entire build together that is good because it synergizes so well. With HGH you get +30% boon duration for your elixirs boons, plus other great trait options in that line for condition removal and decreased elixir cooldowns, which means everything is working together nicely for your elixir utilities to be as powerful as possible.

I really don’t care if it gets nerfed a bit, as it is a really strong build. I just hope they don’t try to ‘rework’ it, as that involves destroying the synergy and usability into a trait that doesn’t work well with anything, even if the abilities themselves are cool.

Gisei.5749:

So, the people in this thread honestly don’t see double SE as OP? It’s simply being blind and/or biased to think otherwise. I’m rather new to the Engi profession, about a month since I hit 80, but I instantly latched onto the old Kit Refinement. It was simply a must have, since stacking SE was ridiculously powerful. I couldn’t care less about the effects of any of the other kits. I simply wanted that second SE, as it pretty much gave me and my allies 10secs of invulnerability.

I’m beginning to think this profession is a magnet to people in Theatre.

For your next assignment, actually read the posts and tally the number of people who complain that double elixir removal was the problem vs people who admit that it was indeed OP.

The problem isn’t that they changed the spells. I was actually looking forward to having more interesting effects than +damage and +healing. The problem is that they changed it badly, especially in moving from local to global cooldowns.

Temper.5478:

Cause the turret cooldown to begin the moment the turret is placed, as opposed to it occurring when it is despawned. If the turret is picked up, no additional cooldown is added. If the turret is killed or manually destroyed, a cooldown is added (either a flat duration like 5 or 10 seconds, or a duration based on the original cooldown), mechanically working somewhat oppositely of the current model.

I absolutely love this idea. (Incidentally, a guildmate and I were playing around with turret play in sPvP this weekend)

It’s awful to feel stuck bunkering a spot because the moment you leave or pick up your turrets to move, you feel utterly defenseless. You have no utilities and no weapon swap (unless you sacrifice a turret for a kit), except some marginally useful F1 skills. Running between points with my turret cooldowns active, I felt extremely naked.

There is a lot of potential though. There is turret positioning, overcharge timings, destruct timings, a lot of cool mechanics that have potential for a high skill ceiling.

There are still some other issues I am working my head around, that might have solutions I just haven’t found yet. Condition removal seems lacking, and the healing turret in general seems mediocre compared to medkit (Too much regen overlap diminishes healing overall). And how our weapons are very weak on their own, and it seems necessary to drop a turret in favor of a kit, just to be able to do non-turret damage. And the extra supply drop turrets very often make the difference between make-or-break for encounters.

That awful cooldown is definitely the bottleneck though.

Next patch:

Speedy Kits now has a 50/50 chance to apply either swiftness or cripple.

Look up condition-burst build with HGH (’nades and elixirs).

IMHO, this is one of the strongest builds among any class. Most engineer builds are rubbish though.

Although if it’s WvW you mean, confusion-centered builds can be very strong.

What does intellectual honesty mean, and how does it allow you to make assumptions about who I am and the way I play?

I was using kit refinement long before 100nades was a thing, mostly for the extra super elixir. After 100nades became a think, I was more aware of its usefulness, but I never centered my build around that 1-trick pony. I favor balanced builds, slightly leaning towards tanky.

I am an RTS player first, and that tends to lead me toward flexible builds with more drawn-out battles. I was drawn toward multi-kit engineer because it gives the variety of elementalist, but without the tedious attunement cooldowns that tends to force players into more limited rotations.

Kit refinement made it especially fun, as you were rewarded for swapping through your variety of kits. Variety is rewarded no more.

darkace.8925:

I misinterpreted the cooldown. I didn’t realize it was a global cooldown, and I agree 20 seconds seems a bit much. This wouldn’t hurt a Engineer running one or maybe two kits on his skill bar, but someone with three is certainly going to feel this change.

But even with the harsh shared cooldown, is it really that bad of a trait? It still seems to me to be in line with the rest of the Adept traits in the Tools trait line. They all strike me as marginally useful traits.

To consciously use the kit refinement skills, you need to not swap kits, because it wastes the cooldown. Yes, it’s a trait that encourages you to not do things.

Which is a serious shame because old kit refinement encouraged lots of in-combat kit swapping, allowing multi-kit builds that felt like odd goofy elementalists.

Mostly it was just fun, and if it was over-powered it could have been nerfed in ways that still kept it fun. Instead they made it not fun.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. :’S

I keep browsing the forums and keeping my engie around in the hopes that something will stand out as being as fun and interesting as KR was.

But for the most part, I have my thief and my warrior, for PvP and PvE, and there just isn’t any reason to give engie playtime.

It’s time to give up on the profession guys. Maybe eventually it will amount to something, but not in the near future.

Might as well go PVT, since power is the main stat so you get more (whereas healing is the main cleric stat). That and you can get an additional good power increase from your VT with sharpening stones.

Killyox.3950:

AsmallChicken.9634:

And we all know that this means nerfs to this build are incomming.

This build is months old with might stacking

My theory on how devs approach engie balance:

They have data and statistics on how frequently certain traits are equipped, or utilities or weapons or whatever. They see something is extremely popular (relative to the class anyway) like kit refinement. They see extremely unpopular features like turrets.

Generic buffs to the unpopular features, and nerfs to the popular ones, with the idea that ~average use of everything in a class means the class is balanced.

If something gets to be overwhelmingly popular, it is going to be nerfed. This was most recently kit refinement in particular (not just for 100 nades but also PvE in general). I would say HGH looks to be a pretty good candidate as engies adjust their builds post-KR.

At least I can speak for myself, that I have dropped KR since the first time they broke it and moved to HGH.

Perhaps this patch just requires us to continue to think outside the box?

Engineers have been saying this and doing this since day one.

The devs just nerf everything we come up with.

Phineas Poe.3018:

luckywaldo.6089:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Kalan.9705:

Hrmm Phineas, there is no difference between any class swapping it’s skills or weapons once they leave combat, and an engineer swapping it’s kits=once the engineer leaves combat.

wat.

I think he means that other classes can carry any or all weapons in their inventory, and chose two depending on the situation.

So a guardian can do GS+Hammer, and carry around a scepter for those times that he needs something ranged.

I knew what he meant. And that’s precisely what I do on my Guardian and Engineer. On my Engi I carry three pistols with me, one with Bloodlust, one with Strength, and one with Force. I also carry two Rifles with me, one with Battle and another with Bloodlust.

But I was talking about while in combat. And in combat the Engineer has plenty more options available than any other class if using kits. We are designed to swap in and out of our kits and weapons, which is why the devs say that we pay a cost for that versatility—because if our Rifle or Pistol was powerful enough to stand alone on its own, on top of the added utility of kits, we would be overpowered.

Talking about swapping weapons outside of combat is totally irrelevant and a pretty hysterical rebuttal to my point.

The part of my post that you cut off said basically just that. You can match a combination of a weapon with any 3 kits, at the cost of your utilities.

What do you think it is about engies that stack so well? Compared to 5 of anything else.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Kalan.9705:

Hrmm Phineas, there is no difference between any class swapping it’s skills or weapons once they leave combat, and an engineer swapping it’s kits=once the engineer leaves combat.

wat.

I think he means that other classes can carry any or all weapons in their inventory, and chose two depending on the situation.

So a guardian can do GS+Hammer, and carry around a scepter for those times that he needs something ranged.

You need to be out of combat to change your two weapons, but engineers similarly need to be out of combat to change utilities (kits).

Of course we can max out at effectively 4 different weapons at one time, at the cost of other utilities.

Soon.5240:

1000+ hours as an Engineer.
6000 kills in WvW
1100 Honor Badges

What exactly is the problem?

So…

Only 6 kills every hour?

And 1 badge every hour?

Assuming you only play WvW, but you didn’t give any information to say any differently. I’m not really sure what those stats were supposed to mean actually.

Ok, I suppose I have a different conclusion then.

The ability to adapt to perspective will vary from person to person. Perhaps by innate ability, perhaps by effort put forth into adapting, a combination of both, or something else altogether.

Give it as much of a try as you desire. Trying is always recommended, but in the end you need to decide for yourself what you like best.

How much experience you have as engineer is nothing, and how much experience you have with smartcast (on any class even) is everything.

It feels scary at first because you can’t see aoe or range. It’s almost like you are aiming blind. In the end though, you are massively improving you action/reaction times because you are halving the number of required actions. And with experience, you get completely used to it, and you can intuitively know what you used to need green circles to know.

Be prepared to be uncomfortable for a while as you get used to it though.

Kardiamond.6952:

Man if Tyler is really, really maining an Engineer, he got to have a talk with the balance team.

Not because we are bad, we are actually really good.

But what about the kit refinement nerf? What was that?

Agreed. I don’t really mind the concept of changing or nerfing kit refinement, but their change was just so buggy and awkward.

At the very least though, they do listen to feedback, and improvements happen, surely even if slowly.

There are definitely some bad builds to avoid. Avoid turrets and gadgets, and avoid spending lots of time auto-attacking with either pistol or rifle. (Rifle isn’t too bad, but pistol auto-attack is horrid)

The best damage comes from grenade kit and bomb kit. For grenades to be good you need the grenadier master trait.

Elixirs are good, rather underwhelming in their support potential (except for R), but there are some good elixir traits that you can swap between as necessary while out of combat.

Those are both terrible explanations, unless you can justify ever choosing adrenal implants over invigorating speed + (speedy kits or infused precision).

It’s part of the design of engineer.

About half of the traits were chosen by rolling a die to copy traits from other professions and randomly place them in the engineer trait lines.

Other classes merely adopted the RNG. Engineers were born in it.

I respectfully disagree; conditions do tons of damage and there are many trait bonuses related to attacking targets with conditions so many people may benefit. I don’t see cleansing as much of an issue because conditions stack on so fast anyway.

If you are running pugs, it’s probably not a very good idea because there can be a lot of overlap (therefore → uselessness) if there is more than one serious condition build, so I agree with you there. But if you are running in a tight-knit group where your builds are designed to complement each other, one solid condition build in the group is a superb addition.

So conditions certainly need some work, but there is a lot of additional fud spread around about them. (such as weaker conditions ‘overwriting’)

For instance, against any objects (Graveling Burrows, Eternal Flame, totems, etc.) conditions are useless.

So is precision and crit damage for that matter.

If you really want full power, the build to go is soldier’s stats with sharpening stones.

AlietteFaye.7316:

I would personally not recommend using Condition Damage builds inside of Dungeons. Just about every player has access to multiple conditions that constantly get stacked and push away from the potential of them.

FYI, conditions from the player with the greatest condition damage stat always have priority.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Effect_stacking

Three or more condition damage players in one group will have a tough time, but one should be completely fine.

For power grenades or any kit-focused build it’s not really a bad idea to roll P/P or P/S anyway, as you get the benefit of two sigils that way. Grenades in general aren’t the best though until you get to 60, when you get the grenadier grandmaster trait.

I would recommend bombs, and traits down that power line that increase bomb aoe and decrease cooldown. Bombs are simply the best damage at the moment, and the aoe is really good for killing groups. Learn to love fire bomb in particular; lay one down immediately and it adds a lot of damage over time as you autoattack bomb spam.

I dislike the idea of passive skills in general because they take away from the interestingness and skill of using active skills well. It’s just kind of like, “hey, I am lazy, so let me stick on this signet to be better without needing to do anything”.

And perma-fury as a single passive effect is overpowered. I can’t think of any other skill in the game that would be close to being that good. Precision signets only offer about ~4.5% extra crit chance, although to be fair you can still stack some fury on top of that.

Still though, that skill would be a necessity for every single build, just for the raw stat increase. You can’t compensate for engineer being kitten everywhere by giving it 1 overpowered skill.

Stability is NOT toughness. There is literally a boon called stability, and it is the counter to incoming CC’s.

I completely agree that the lack of stability hurts, both in PvP and dungeons. I had forgotten about the old juggernaut but you made me miss it again already. ;_;

It was honestly OP to have 100% uptime, but engie really got nothing back to compensate.

Mesmer was announced after Engineer.

Mesmer was already a profession that existed in GW1, so its reasonable to guess that they already had Mesmer designs early on, and saved it for the final announce so that they ended on something awesome and not silly. (It is, after all, one of the best-designed classes in GW2)

Nothing like engineer had existed, and it probably never should have.

Interesting, I’ve been running something along these lines, except with grenades and bombs instead of FT and TK, and 30 points in explosions. There are a lot of good traits in the explosions lines that benefit both.

Hell, bombs are good even just for the smoke field and Big Ol’ Bomb; those offer a hell of a lot of control while sitting on a point.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcMM9VmalNMmalNMx9MGGcRqzsom8khf7070m7kNs70V7owY8ofy

I haven’t tried the sigil of energy yet but it sounds to be good fun!

It’s versatile because you can mix and match the different abilities more easily. I can place down a big ol bomb, healing turret, then fire bomb, and then swap to pistol shield, and get 3x blast finishers from bomb explosion, turret explosion, and magnetic inversion for 9 stacks of might on the group, plus the bit of regeneration from while the turret was up.

I can use confusion bomb, then pistol #3 for more confusion and blind so I can take a confused hit for free, then back to smoke bomb for 4 more seconds of free confused hits.

I can put down a super elixir field and then use elixir bombs to heal everyone in melee range while doing still doing damage.

A lot of skills are buggy and/or underwhelming, but the ability for a variety of creative skill combinations is there. At no point do I feel like I am using skills simply because they are off cooldown, like I do with most other classes. That is versatility.

The hybrid tax though is bullkitten.

I would like more details on that build, especially skill rotations.

Do you mostly aim to apply conditions, or where do you look to get your power dps from?

My wvw k/d ratio is still 5:1 on a bad day.

This could be meaningless, because you get kill credit just for doing a little bit of damage. You could have 10 people get credit for one kill. So everyone in the game should have absurdly good k:d ratios.

How? “Oh look they vapor formed…” walks over to where Vapor form ended, restarts stomp Besides it adds downed penalty…

Yeah, that’s awesome.

Consider engineer downed abilities. Your #2 is good for interruption one single target. If 2 people are finishing you, you are dead, there is nothing you can do. Additionally, if you are blinded, you don’t even get that 1 interrupt! Or else if the finisher activates stealth or stability, it’s useless. You are dead.

Mist form is an absolute guarantee to keep you alive for a few more seconds, regardless of blind effects on you, stability or stealth on the enemy, or multiple finishers.

Number 3 abilities on both are pretty useless. Engineer’s blast is potentially awesome but you are rarely ever alive long enough to use it.