I want to make an engineer. Is it really as bad a class as I've read some players claim?

For the record, my first character that I really put time into when GW2 first came out was an engi, and I had a ton of fun with her. However, down the road I deleted that character and now I am strongly considering starting up a new one. I am hearing that you have play an engineer like a pianist? What does that even mean? That I need to be able to have good microing ability?
As long as the class is fun, I welcome the challenge. Could I get some thoughts from those who have ideally played engineer back at launch and today?

What they are refering to is that on top of 5 weapon and 5 utility skills engi has 5 toolbelt skills, the micromanagment comes from weapon kits. (Mostly hyperbolic complaints)The biggest problem with engi is that he's a bit of a mess that anet doesn't seem to know what to do with.He's vaiable and fun if you can ignore it's more glaring issues. (I can so it's possible to do)

It was me stating that you need to play like a pianist =)The reason behind that is that engineer is said to have a very high skill ceiling. While on Warrior, I just use my greatsword and axe/shield plus a utility skill here an there to totally wreck everything and never die, on engineer you need to be swapping kits and utilizing your own combo fields all the time.That doesn't necessarily mean that engineer is a bad class. Actually, it's a brilliant class. Sadly, it's just not for me :/

Still, I always take a bow when witnessing a skillful engineer player =)Don't let others derail you, try the engineer and perhaps, its playstyle will suit you perfectly? It's just not as easy as ranger pew-pewing but I guess, for those that dare, it might end up to be very rewarding when you do outsmart your foe.Just go for it!

On the PVE side, the engineer is significantly less piano-heavy than it was prior. Condi engi is still a literal pain to play, but the other builds are pretty easy. There isn't as much kit switching as there used to be, now that a lot of the damage has been moved away from kits and toward the main weapons.

PVP side... I haven't been keeping track. I still imagine that it is quite difficult to play one.

EDIT: What is meant by the whole "piano" thing is this: For a long time, in order to do maximum damage on the engineer, you had to use specific skills from specific kits in a specific order.. You had to quickly swap from bomb kit, to elixir gun, to grenade kit, to main-hand weapon, to bomb kit, all the while using the toolbelt skills and keeping track of the various procs/internal cooldowns of the traits and skills. Since you had to press one button for each kit swap, it meant that you had to have a higher actions-per-minute to play the engineer well than any other class in the game.

The reward for this was that the engineer could be near unstoppable in PVP if done right. It had a really high skill ceiling. But, the modern specs don't do this nearly as much. The holosmith spends a lot of its time just sitting in holo mode, not kit swapping much at all. The scrapper is similar, sitting on the hammer instead of kit swapping.

@solfizz.5730 said:For the record, my first character that I really put time into when GW2 first came out was an engi, and I had a ton of fun with her. However, down the road I deleted that character and now I am strongly considering starting up a new one. I am hearing that you have play an engineer like a pianist? What does that even mean? That I need to be able to have good microing ability?

As long as the class is fun, I welcome the challenge. Could I get some thoughts from those who have ideally played engineer back at launch and today?

Technically if you want, you can still play the piano condi build. But there's little point now. Holosmith is just better, and much, much simpler to play. It even has a kitless build that's even simpler.

I've only recently started to REALLY play my engi and I'm having alot of fun with it. The Holosmith is pretty awesome in my opinion, and it makes the Scrapper look like a pansy when you compare them next to each other.

I have a L22 Asuran Engineer at the moment and I have to say that I find the gameplay quite fun and refreshing. I like having the extra abilities to manage. Sadly, she has been overtaking by my Mesmer, which I am having such a blast playing.

Maybe I like micro-management based classes...hehe.

Every class is a bad class if you read enough ;)

Go to YouTube. Search for vt Xan and take a look on how wvw is when you are good at the class.There is also Zan but he is a pvp player and does not have many vids unfortunatly.

Thanks for all the replies! I will probably start my engi build tonight or tomorrow. :+1:

Piano profession (engineer and elementalist) named because it’s like playing Mozart on a piano, your fingers are everywhere. I think the highest damage output tested on a golem from Engineer had a 57 skill rotation at one point, so skills chained one after the other in different sequences. Piano.

As soon as we could beta the PoF elites I fell in love with Holosmith though, it’s quite fluid and doesn’t rely heavily on kits, so my Holo is now my main fractal runner, it’s fun flashy and easy to learn without being too simple.

to me the engie is the weakest of all, they depend way to much on kits which is a chore to say the least and the weapon skills are horrible at best. (it's not like we have allot of choice on the matter)i used to play an engie with turrets but for some reason they nerved it to the ground, they want ppl to use kits while i rather have weapon swap.

What most people have an issue with is the engineer having to utilize kits in order to be most effective. This requires you to be familiar with alot more skills than your other classes, and when to swap between them - hence the "pianist" playstyle. It means you need to think fast and ahead in high end content and makes for a really high skill floor profession.

In terms of core profession buffs since the first expansion, sadly engi has been the one receiving the least and therefore probably is the closest of all the professions to it's original design. This makes it harder to keep up with the other professions, as they have gotten faster, easier to play and more hard hitting. In other words playing an engineer simply require more of you as a player, that you take the time to learn your traits/skills and how to put them to good use moreso than the other professions.

But this applied even back before the expansions in my opinion. Before PoF and Holosmith there never were "decent" engi's. Either they were plain bad or gods, and I say this as a thief roamer main so I've met my fair share.

As long as you enjoy playing it, I wouldn't worry one bit about all of this. You can still do great in all aspects of the game, and knowing you've had to work harder to earn it should just make every victory just that little bit sweeter. It might be unforgiving at times, but trust me it will make you a better player in the long run.

@sorudo.9054 said:to me the engie is the weakest of all, they depend way to much on kits which is a chore to say the least and the weapon skills are horrible at best. (it's not like we have allot of choice on the matter)i used to play an engie with turrets but for some reason they nerved it to the ground, they want ppl to use kits while i rather have weapon swap.

It was nerfed because of the turret engi meta in spvp. It was bullskritt.

@derd.6413 said:

@sorudo.9054 said:to me the engie is the weakest of all, they depend way to much on kits which is a chore to say the least and the weapon skills are horrible at best. (it's not like we have allot of choice on the matter)i used to play an engie with turrets but for some reason they nerved it to the ground, they want ppl to use kits while i rather have weapon swap.

they could separate them for PvE, i never play PvP so it doesn't serve the profession at all. (for PvE ofcouse)

Engi is ridiculously fun to play even if its not one of the top classes.

@sorudo.9054 said:

@derd.6413 said:

@sorudo.9054 said:to me the engie is the weakest of all, they depend way to much on kits which is a chore to say the least and the weapon skills are horrible at best. (it's not like we have allot of choice on the matter)i used to play an engie with turrets but for some reason they nerved it to the ground, they want ppl to use kits while i rather have weapon swap.

They only recently started to split skills between game modes, so maybe soon.Eventually.When they get around to it.In the futureProbaly not

Engi is the only class I haven't rolled yet, so I can't attest to its gameplay, but I CAN tell you that they are all over WvW these days, and really good Engi players are damn near impossible to kill, and hit like a truck.

I have played the engineer as my main profession since launch, and used it in all parts of the game (PvE, PvP, WvW, raids, fractals). In the past it wasn't always the most hard hitting but it always had versitial options because of the kits.

I saw a lot of posts here complaining about using kits, but, in my opinion, switching kits is as seamless as swapping weapons, if you even need to do it. The modern day meta holosmith excels in all content of the game right now, except WvW, and it is much easier to play than it ever used to be. The days of the "piano" engi were based on an old condi meta build, but holosmith changed that around.

It might not be the easiest class to play, but it is fun, and rewarding.

@"solfizz.5730" said:For the record, my first character that I really put time into when GW2 first came out was an engi, and I had a ton of fun with her. However, down the road I deleted that character and now I am strongly considering starting up a new one. I am hearing that you have play an engineer like a pianist? What does that even mean? That I need to be able to have good microing ability?

As long as the class is fun, I welcome the challenge. Could I get some thoughts from those who have ideally played engineer back at launch and today?

Yes, playing like a pianist is being able to have good micro managing skills and the only time you ever get to play like that is when you play core engineer, a profession that is seen by many players as inferior to the dumbed down specialization, the Holosmith.

The players who claim that the engineer is a bad professions are those who haven't played the profession, especially back in the days before elite specializations were introduced in Guild Wars 2. Before the Holosmith and even the Scrapper, the engineer was the least played profession in the entire game. ArenaNet looks at those statistics one day and they think "OK, for Path of Fire let's make an elite specialization that is easier to play, but won't be as effective as core engineer".

While they got the "easier to play" part right, they got the opposite part of "not as effective". People were expecting to have a good time playing the dumbed down version of the engineer by skipping the core elements that made engineer the most difficult profession in the entire game. Too many players complain that swapping kits is difficult, that you have to learn what those weapon skills do, memorizing skills and when to use them, what kind of combos you can do, but it's no different to the elementalist and swapping attunements.

I've been playing core power engineer for 5 years and seeing ArenaNet ignore the profession makes it worse. They have the largest opportunity to buff or rework some of the kits in order to bring back core engineer from the retirement home and make it a viable profession that is seen by many players as lackluster.

Engie is probably one of the worst professions to play and win from a basic efficiency POV. But, IMO, is also THE most fun profession of all, so if you play for fun, not only to win, then you'll keep playing engie despite its flaws for many years.

@"Hoodie.1045" said:

Yes, playing like a pianist is being able to have good micro managing skills and the only time you ever get to play like that is when you play core engineer, a profession that is seen by many players as inferior to the dumbed down specialization, the Holosmith.

The players who claim that the engineer is a bad professions are those who haven't played the profession, especially back in the days before elite specializations were introduced in Guild Wars 2. Before the Holosmith and even the Scrapper, the engineer was the least played profession in the entire game. ArenaNet looks at those statistics one day and they think "OK, for Path of Fire let's make an elite specialization that is easier to play, but won't be as effective as core engineer".

While they got the "easier to play" part right, they got the opposite part of "not as effective". People were expecting to have a good time playing the dumbed down version of the engineer by skipping the core elements that made engineer the most difficult profession in the entire game. Too many players complain that swapping kits is difficult, that you have to learn what those weapon skills do, memorizing skills and what they do, what kind of combos you can do, but it's no different to the elementalist and swapping attunements.

I don't quite get the "Holo is easier to play than Core" part. It simply performs better, thus it's easier to perform well with it. But mechanic-wise it's another kit that locks out other kits and weapon skills (which means you'll have to plan ahead not having certain skills available). It also introduces another resource to manage and can blow yourself up if you don't pay attention to it. One gets used to it over time and it rarely happens once it has, still attention is a limited mental resource and you have to apply some of it to heat. Plus you still have to do everything a normal engi does... switching kits, comboing and positioning (maybe even more so because you'll switch between melee and range more often), ...

tl;dr: It's easier to perform well with it but harder to play to its potential, imo.

@derd.6413 said:

@sorudo.9054 said:

@derd.6413 said:

@sorudo.9054 said:to me the engie is the weakest of all, they depend way to much on kits which is a chore to say the least and the weapon skills are horrible at best. (it's not like we have allot of choice on the matter)i used to play an engie with turrets but for some reason they nerved it to the ground, they want ppl to use kits while i rather have weapon swap.

Actually you fail to understand why it was nerfed. Turrets we're not particularly effective. Mid tier and up, a turret build was an inferior build in almost every way. The issue is that the vast majority of the people in PvP in my experience were medicre at best. The weak players cried, complained, and vocalized. They nerfed the turrets value across the board based on the lowest common denominator.

Engi is fun because you have to press tons of buttons. If you like that, try it. The reason why people say it's bad is because the damage is not the highest. People hate everything that doesn't have high damage (which is stupid). You have to understand that Engi is the best jack-of-all-trades profession, it's not supposed to be top DPS in the first place. Anyone who isn't obsessed with meta crap will enjoy Engi.

@Hoodie.1045 said:

@"solfizz.5730" said:For the record, my first character that I really put time into when GW2 first came out was an engi, and I had a ton of fun with her. However, down the road I deleted that character and now I am strongly considering starting up a new one. I am hearing that you have play an engineer like a pianist? What does that even mean? That I need to be able to have good microing ability?

As long as the class is fun, I welcome the challenge. Could I get some thoughts from those who have ideally played engineer back at launch and today?

I'm a little confused; the majority of your comment seems to point that core engineers are great, but then at the bottom you state that it's really unfortunate they've been ignored. Would you mind being specific (in an ELI5 way preferably) as to what things are being overlooked? BTW I am thankful for your post, just a little confused as to the last sentence after you give praise to core engineer the first 80% of your post.