Hi everyone, this is going to be a relatively short post, but it's going to highlight two issues that badly affect core engineer in the worst ways possible.

Addressing these issues would go a long ways towards helping resolve core engineer's problems without technically buffing the class. ArenaNet Devs, if you have no idea where to start fixing core engineer's problems, here's a good place to start.

Activation Time

Almost all core engineer skills suffer from some sort of activation time that differs from the tooltip's stated activation time. Here I'm going to compile a short list of skills:

Pistol

• Fragmentation Shot - Stated activation time is 1/2 a second. Actual activation time is 0.8275 seconds.

Rifle

• Hip Shot - Stated activation time is 3/4 a second. Actual activation time is 0.84 seconds.

Bomb Kit

• Bomb - Stated activation time is 1/2 a second. Actual activation time is 0.86 seconds
• This seems to be true for all bombs

Grenade Kit

• Grenade - Stated activation time is 1/2 a second. Actual activation time is 1 second.
• This seems to be true for all grenades

Tool Kit

• Smack, Whack, Thwack - Stated activation time for entire chain - 2 seconds. Actual activation time is 3.23 seconds.

Elixir Gun

• Tranquilizer Dart - Stated activation time is 3/4 of a second. Actual activation time is 0.83 seconds

Harpoon Gun

• Homing Torpedo - Stated activation time is 1 second. Actual activation time is 1.52 seconds.

Actually making these skills cast at their stated times would go a long ways towards making core engineer feel good and worthwhile to play again. The profession as a whole is remarkably sluggish, especially because these skills are so slow.

Flight Time

This is a little different -- flight time is how long projectiles are in the air. Engineer, at least as far as I'm aware, is the only class that has projectiles capable of staying in the air longer than 1/2 a second (except for thief and warrior bows). This has a dramatic effect on performance of engineer skills in competitive game modes, yet you'd never find this information anywhere without actually playing the class. If ArenaNet wants core engineer to be competitive, it should consider lowering the flight times of most of core engineer's skills dramatically. Here's a short list of skills that have flight time issues:

• Grenades - At max range, untraited, grenades take approximately 1.5-2 seconds to land. Traited, it's closer to 1 second before they reach their target. Suggestion: Make traited grenade projectile speed increase baseline.
• Mortar shells - At max range, mortar shells take roughly 2-3 seconds to land. There is no trait to reduce flight times, rendering the weapon useless for damage at max range in any competitive setting.
• Glob Shot - Wildly unpredictable flight times on targets near max range, especially if they are moving. There's some kind of weird arc going on with this skill that just needs to be removed so it's treated as a normal projectile.
• Rocket - At max range, this skill has a flight time of 5 seconds, which is unfathomable. Its arc is massive.
• Toss Elixir skills - Takes roughly 1 second to reach the target area at max range. These skills are generally pretty bad at range, most engineers choose to use them at their feet or near a downed ally.
• Underwater skills - Scatter Mines and Net Wall have very slow flight times.
• Throw Wrench - Not a bad flight time.
• Launch Personal Battering Ram - The ranged flight pattern on this is so bad, I almost never use it beyond melee range in the first place. Flies about as quickly as guardian scepter orbs, but has no tracking behavior.
• Throw Napalm / Throw Mine / Med Kit throw skills -- tbh, I don't actually know what these look like at max range. Never even bothered.

Reducing flight times on most of engineer's projectile skills would also go a long way towards buffing the core class without technically buffing the class in the first place. Just sayin.

Will take a risk and go ahead and tag @Ben Phongluangtham.1065 since it seems to be something that affects PvP as a whole.

Fun fact, Rocket (the rocket turret toolbelt skill) takes around 5-6 secs of Flight time if thrown at his max range, you can throw this to the middle of a cap point and no one will ever know where that came from... Implying it hits someone with that stupid flight time...

The RNG on everything (and this thread doesnt even mention elite stuff like the gyros or the unreliable blowtorch...) and delay on engie projectiles is pretty much the reason I couldnt take running it as my main anymore and had to leave it behind for more reliable classes. Would like for it to improve but I dont have much hope for that.

I agree that the fligh times of some projectiels (e.g. mortar) could be highly improved . Concerning the rocket as a single skill, I like the Long flight time of it as a fun skill. Assuming the target is still within the Impact area you can prepare a very nice spike using rocket in combination with e.g. grenade Barrage.

The activation times on the other Hand, especially of Auto attack chains are directly affecting the DPS. Reducing the activation times of e.g. bomb kit, pistol or grenades would proportionally increase the Auto attack dps. Therefore I would rather suggest to either adapt the tooltip Information to match the actual activation time or to adapt the damage of those Auto attack skills together with the activation times.

Example bomb kit: reducing the activation time of 0.86s to 0.5s as the tooltip says would increase the Auto attack dps by 72%! This would mean that on a DPS Golem with raid buffs, the Auto attack of the bomb kit would skyrocket to something like 35-40k dps when no damage adjustment on those Auto attack skills will be performed.

@Vagrant.7206

This is one of core engineers' biggest problems. Traits like the Grenadier are pretty much mandatory when using the Grenade Kit because the throw velocity and explosion radius greatly impact the kit and playing without the trait makes the kit useless. These kinds of traits shouldn't even exist because it kills build variety. The slow cast times with core engineers' skill whether it's with the pistols, rifle, Grenade Kit, Tool Kit etc. is what hinders the profession to compete with the Holosmith and with other professions in general.

In my opinion, Grenadiers' throw velocity and explosion radius should be made baseline and have it so that it reduces the cooldown on grenade skills and increases the range of the skills to 1200. It will be similar to the old Grenadier trait, where you could throw 3 grenades instead of 2 (yes, back in the day you only threw 2 grenades instead of 3) and an increased range to 1500. Changing the trait like this will make it less mandatory as the current version is not a case of 'you could use this trait with this kit', but instead it's a case of 'you MUST use this trait with this kit'.

The incorrect cast times and flight times is what affects core engineers' DPS overall. Not only that, but the rifles' damage is very mediocre as well as the Grenade Kit auto attack. The auto attacks' damage if far lower and scales very poorly with power damage compared to Shrapnel Grenade (Grenade 117 (0.33) vs Shrapnel Grenade 224 (0.63)). Let's just hope that these issues will be fixed in the balance patch, because quite frankly I'm getting sick of ArenaNet neglecting core engineer. I'm sick of them not just for ignoring the profession for such a long time, but ignoring these kind of issues that break the profession entirely, things that should work as they are stated on the tooltips, but they don't.

@Prinzsecond.4863 said:I agree that the fligh times of some projectiels (e.g. mortar) could be highly improved . Concerning the rocket as a single skill, I like the Long flight time of it as a fun skill. Assuming the target is still within the Impact area you can prepare a very nice spike using rocket in combination with e.g. grenade Barrage.

The activation times on the other Hand, especially of Auto attack chains are directly affecting the DPS. Reducing the activation times of e.g. bomb kit, pistol or grenades would proportionally increase the Auto attack dps. Therefore I would rather suggest to either adapt the tooltip Information to match the actual activation time or to adapt the damage of those Auto attack skills together with the activation times.

Example bomb kit: reducing the activation time of 0.86s to 0.5s as the tooltip says would increase the Auto attack dps by 72%! This would mean that on a DPS Golem with raid buffs, the Auto attack of the bomb kit would skyrocket to something like 35-40k dps when no damage adjustment on those Auto attack skills will be performed.

Of course some damage adjustment would be necessary on some of the skills, particularly bomb/grenade kits, but they have been balancing bomb kit and grenade kit on some very wonky grounds in the first place. Ever notice that holo sword seems slow and clunky? That's because it's meant to be used as a competitor to bomb kit, which is equally slow and clunky. If these weapons were actually activating at their stated times, but did slightly less damage, they might feel a bit better to use.

BTW, the list above left out holo sword and scrapper hammer. These two weapons also do not activate at their stated activation times - Holo Sword auto chain should be 1.75 seconds, it's actually 2.37 seconds, and scrapper hammer should be 1.5 seconds, it's actually 2.75 seconds.

@Vagrant.7206 said:Mortar shells - At max range, mortar shells take roughly 2-3 seconds to land. There is no trait to reduce flight times, rendering the weapon useless for damage at max range in any competitive setting.

Honestly that could trivially be balanced if the devs dared to make individual abilities powerful instead of rapidly spammable.

If even the mortar AA had 5-6 seconds CD, cast 1 second while you sit down with a mortar, and then always needed 3s to fly, even if shot close (higher arc in that case!), then in return the damage could be something which felt more like an elite, less like a squirt gun.

@Carighan.6758 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:Mortar shells - At max range, mortar shells take roughly 2-3 seconds to land. There is no trait to reduce flight times, rendering the weapon useless for damage at max range in any competitive setting.

That would likely only make mortar kit relevant in WvW. In any other game mode, it wouldn't help.

Couldn't agree with this more. I've been playing mainly and only engi since start, it wasn't till I tried other jobs till I realized how seamlessly and quick other job skills work in comparison.

The effect really seems compounded when you throw in taking a split second having to aim or swapping into a kit to use the 1 item that's useful in it.

It's gotten somewhat better, but many items seem to be almost a 1:1 trade off eg overcharge shot (self stun), AED toolbelt 3/4 cast for a 1 sec stun lol or a toss elixir toolbelt that has almost same buff time as set up & cast time. Again, this part has gotten somewhat better but it's still there.

Engi is slow and why I pack much higher tough/vit #'s than what I see floating around as recommended on these forms. It's good once it gets going but compared to other jobs can almost feel like you're playing a different game than everyone else sometimes.

@Vagrant.7206 said:That would likely only make mortar kit relevant in WvW. In any other game mode, it wouldn't help.

But it would be a problem if a skill meant to shell targets at long range and has a wide-radius AE even on the #1 attack is useful for shelling populated areas? As in, you fire in blindly, denying area (that's why the damage has to be so high per shot!) instead of specifically targetting person X?

Even in sPvP, you could fire at the capture point. And in PvE, it could be good for fights with lots of adds.

Nearly all tooltip-listed cast times are incorrect in this game. Casting times are often based on animation speeds, and what you see in the tooltip is a rounded approximation.

@cat.8975 said:Nearly all tooltip-listed cast times are incorrect in this game. Casting times are often based on animation speeds, and what you see in the tooltip is a rounded approximation.

Aye, but many of engineer's are WAY off for the actual casting time. Frag shot on pistol, bomb kit, grenade kit, and harpoon gun are some of the worst offenders.

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@cat.8975 said:Nearly all tooltip-listed cast times are incorrect in this game. Casting times are often based on animation speeds, and what you see in the tooltip is a rounded approximation.

It's especially worse for the harpoon gun. Have you seen the cast times on the harpoon gun? They're probably the slowest in the game.