What do people think of engineer ?

I want to know what you guys think of engineer. I see a lot of people saying engineer is a jack of all trades class.

I don't know if I agree with that.

I find engineer to be a solo selfish DPS class with selfish utility traits.

Any ways I know people don't usually main engineer. I am wondering what people think of engineers skills traits and elite specs.

I am not asking for engineer buffs. I think engineer is unpopular in guild wars 2 because they are not flashy or interesting and also they don't seem very team friendly.

I know people make engineers to have all the classes at 80 and will play engineer if it gets powerful in pvp.

I just want to (also) know what makes engineer ugly boring or unpopular to you ?

Is engineer a spiritual class ? Does it lack power and damage ? Does it seem boring or not exciting ? Does engineer feel weak in pvp ?

I am trying to figure out why someone doesn't like engineer or why engineer is unpopular.

My opinion is - I love engineer because they are the weirdest class and the black sheep of guild wars 2 as well they require a lot of suffering and dying and feeling weak in guild wars 2 PvP.

I also think engineer has a strange system with their skills. They basically have many weapons like warrior but they have to give up utility slots to access these extra weapons. Kind of like elementalists. But engineers also have turrets which is a form of pets.

Also engineers have gadgets which are strong crowd control damage skills. Great for bar breaking.

And engineer has elixirs which are supposed to be powerful boon spamming for themselves and others.

Engineers are wonky but facinating. I think they are very black sheep of the player base.

Any ways I want to hear stories. What do you think of the engineer ? Do you have one for completion sake or do you like them or do you keep them as a PvP token if they get buffed ?

I want to see why engineer is the 2nd least played class (revenant being 1st).

Thanks guys.

it's my kind of class.. it just looks really difficult so i haven't bothered with it.

Why would you say that engineer is weak in PvP?Holosmith does extremely well in pvp right now and is on the same level as spellbreaker viability wise.In fact I'd say it needs a slight nerf.

But yes, I can agree on the fact, that engi is underrepresented as a whole in all gamemodes.But NOT beacuse its weak.

Engi, imo, is very difficult class to master and has a bit of an "entry barrier" for new(er) players.Apart from weaver, engi has the most spells in the game, it requires a good understanding of combos (fields and finishers) and needs ressource management (at least in the case of holosmith). That is quite a lot to learn.

Also, I think that the scrapper spec branded engi as a useless spec without any real role identity....and in the mind of a lot of players, that still carries over to engi as a whole.

To sum it up: Holo is a good spec but is stigmatized from the absolute uselessness that is the scrapper (and even core) spec.

There are two reasons why engineer isn't played that much:

(1): They're hard to play(2): They don't have a catchy theme

Otherwise, I do like the class. But as far as being selfish goes... its complicated. In the modern game, nobody cares about blasting in fire or smoke fields anymore. For a time, though, it was one of the best ways to generate might and stealth. Engineers have a lot of environmental effects, so they were capable of blasting might with the best of them. If we were really styling, we could blast water fields and heal everybody up, too. Those effects persist today, but they aren't as useful. Engineers do have projectile destruction, stealth, fire fields, blast finishers, blind spam, condi cleanse, minor heals, and the toss elixir skills. The Scrapper has more abilities, such as the bulwark gyro's unique protection and the spooky rez at a distance skill via function gyro.

Engineers just don't spread boons out as much anymore.

Sorry I was thinking of core engineer at the time of writing.

I will agree that holosmith brought life to the engineer and is fun to play.

But core engineer is kind of wonky. I think with out holosmith engineer would just be....dead.

Also I understand that engineers did used to be jack of all trades in the past. But today I find them underwhelming because of how weaponized the game has become.

Any ways thanks for the replies. Cheer guys.

Cool thread. I'm really considering creating a Eng myself. Truth is, core eng seems very all over the place and as far as e-spec goes: holosmith, tho is a great concept, being basically pure dmg it's not my cup of tea . Scrapper on the other hand is very team support-orientated, which fits my playstyle, tho it doesn't look as cool as a reaper, firebrand, etc. I really hope future e-specs really bring to life other cool concepts about the core profession, maybe a exosuit or alchemist themed as other people suggested on other thrads.

Engineer is my favorite class. But my problems with it mostly lie with Kits. I don't like them, and I don't like being forced to use them. Then there's also the problem of the rifle...the warrior rifle is much, much more interesting and...more like a rifle...than the engineer rifle, which is more like a sawed off shotgun. That's just very strange to me.

I have fun playing a support build scrapper in wvw on my engi. Not sure if I have really any in depth thoughts about it though.

Wow i just watched chaith on twitch. My love and justice for engineer went up by 1000%

Scrapper is good support and a powerful duelists. And elixir gun blast / fields and morter kit fields are so much utility healing and boons.

OK i think i feel good about engineer now. Chaith brings engineers justice.

Ok, I see a lot of misconceptions in this thread.

I've mained engi since 2012. It's not that core engineer is poorly designed, or that engineer is a selfish class. Quite the opposite. It was designed well for vanilla GW2, and could be very team supportive with proper field placement and blasting. It was the one class that could AoE stealth an entire team and might blast while doing competent DPS in dungeons and fractals, and even do some team healing to boot. No other class was able to switch roles like it at the time.

But it's aged poorly. Blasting fields is not nearly as powerful as it once was. The competent damage has become mediocre (power bomber/condi engineer). Many e-specs do the jack of all trades better (IE Chrono, Firebrand, Druid). Much of its complexity has been left in the dust by powercreep. As I said, it's aged poorly. This is why holosmith seems so incongruous with the rest of the class -- holosmith was designed for current powercreep, making it feel right while core and scrapper feel clunky.

A good engineer (IE Chaith, as you mentioned) can still use core engineer to way outperform novices, but it takes significantly more dedication to get to that level than other classes require. To this day, I still get people in fractal groups wondering how I can AoE stealth people without the sneak gyro. I particularly get wowed when a non-engi player knows that trick. There's lots of depth in the game that got ignored with powercreep.

Playing core engi well requires deep knowledge of the game such as blasting smoke fields for stealth (leap also), fire fields for might, or water fields for heals (leap also, evident by scrapper hammer).

It also generally involves using kits & stacking multiple procs of traits such as burn/bleed on critical, since pistol and rifle aren't scaled up to elite spec damage.

Engineer sounds fun on paper.... But it is badly implemented.

I had a very hard time leveling the class and absolutely hated it. Was not what I was expecting, I stuck it out though. I feel like I know the class very well now and it is hard to play any other class for me. I love playing scrapper in wvw, holosmith in pvp and experimenting with core in pve. Tip for anyone else starting engineer, stick with rifle starting off use firearms traits and take sanguine array first chance you get. Use grenades, rifle, healing turret and elixir u to level and focus on power, ferocity and precision stats. You have to learn to move and dodge while attacking to be effective with this class.

I'm not sure why one would say Engineer is selfish. At any rate, I find Engineer to be insanely fun. I've been playing the game (off and on) since launch and Engineer has remained my main throughout all of that. It's challenging to play, but I feel that you are rewarded for learning how to play Engineer. Personally, I think that since it is a difficult profession and there are easier professions you can play that gets the same benefits going is the reason why it's not played as often. But it is amazingly fun, core, Scrapper, and Holosmith all are great. I look forward to future Elites that grow the profession.

Then again, my second main is Revenant soooooooo

Engineer was the last class I leveled to 80. And it was extra painful because I've played all the shiny HOT and POF specs on all the other classes. I would recommend to tomb you way to at least level 20 or 30. There were very few weapon choices and you have very little access to kits and turrets during early levels.It gets better after that and I learned most about combo fields on engi.I feel like engi is quite like ele, once you learned it, it becomes fun and addicting.

Engineer was the last on my list of class that i would play due to thematic preference and people saying bad things about it. After giving it a shot, I find it a really fun class. Theres a ton of skills to adapt to situations and holosmith is an amazing e-spec ( I have yet to play scrapper). Maybe thematic-wise engineer looks dull and bland that people seems to be the reason people avoid the class. I hope engi will receive more love from Anet (my main necro too >.>)