Engineers need a big hug and a lot of love - A suggestion thread

[Dawdler.8521]

@Iozeph.5617 said:Why? It's a rifle. Not to be pedantic here but it's rifled to begin with. It's not a musket, or even a blunderbuss.Not to be pedantic either but it literally has a skill called blunderbuss.

[ILoveMonotony.1479]

Because limitations are a good thing. You should have to give up some perks in order to gain others. Creating overloaded abilities and making others baseline got us exactly where we are now: massive powercreep followed by penalty traits in hope to even the odds somehow.

[Iozeph.5617]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Iozeph.5617 said:Why? It's a rifle. Not to be pedantic here but it's rifled to begin with. It's not a musket, or even a blunderbuss.Not to be pedantic either but it literally has a skill called blunderbuss.

So which is it then? Because it's being called a rifle. Or is this just the sort of stupid generalities used by people who make a game and don;t know what they're talking about?

[Iozeph.5617]

@"Elmo Benchwarmer.3025" said:Because limitations are a good thing. You should have to give up some perks in order to gain others. Creating overloaded abilities and making others baseline got us exactly where we are now: massive powercreep followed by penalty traits in hope to even the odds somehow.

Don't have a problem with limitations. I have a problem with core being gutted to tone down the performance of elites rather than Elites being prudently crafted around the foundation line without doing harm to them.

I'd say we got here more because devs probably took what, to them at least, seemed to be the most expedient method of solving a problem- the rationale probably being, 'Scrapper/Holo/whatever is going to be so much more awesome than core- why should anybody care if we repeatedly chop out functionality there instead of the actual problem spec lines? Nobody's going to be playing those anyway, right?' Which is why we have a core profession that's been left so far behind while we have two elite specs which, in spite of repeated nerfing, are still whinged about for being overdone for competitive play.

I wouldn't mind seeing rifle range knocked down but only if everybody's range -that is, every single weapon on every single profession is knocked down into the same boring gutter of twelve hundred or even one thousand range. But even then that's a bad idea because if you normalise range in such a fashion you're going to see certain professions- mesmers, ele, rev etc. will still diminate via front loading from those ranges due just to the mechanics of how their weapons are implemented. In the end normalising hurts more because we've lost so much sustain at the ranges where we're allegedly supposed to be fighting all the time(Short to medium).

If we don't have a way to have at least one weapon that affords us some sort of range advantage (not mortar) or just parity then we're going to be stuck in the same rut. Fifteen hundred range baseline on rifle isn't too much to ask, but that's just me.

As an addendum to the stuff about Blunderbuss - There's plenty of guns on the market that offer shifts between rifle ammunition, shotgun ammunition, and some that also offer use of black powder on the same platform- a couple examples-

https://www.tcarms.com/firearms/interchangeable-platforms/encore-pro-hunter

https://www.rossiusa.com/whatsnew-trifecta.cfm

The limiting factor being that these are kept to single shot because they accomplish this flexibility via a barrel change and so don't rely on magazine. In the end I wish ANet would have made up their mind and explained just exactly what it is we're using, or even that they should have gone the extra distance and made Shotgun or Blunderbuss a distinct weapon type instead of bodging everything erroneously under one label as they've done. It's only screwed us into the corner were in now.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Iozeph.5617 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Iozeph.5617 said:Why? It's a rifle. Not to be pedantic here but it's rifled to begin with. It's not a musket, or even a blunderbuss.Not to be pedantic either but it literally has a skill called blunderbuss.

So which is it then? Because it's being called a rifle. Or is this just the sort of stupid generalities used by people who make a game and don;t know what they're talking about?Yes, it's being called a rifle. Just like a certain mesmer weapon is called a greatsword but is it used like one?

[Iozeph.5617]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Iozeph.5617 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Iozeph.5617 said:Why? It's a rifle. Not to be pedantic here but it's rifled to begin with. It's not a musket, or even a blunderbuss.Not to be pedantic either but it literally has a skill called blunderbuss.

So which is it then? Because it's being called a rifle. Or is this just the sort of stupid generalities used by people who make a game and don;t know what they're talking about?Yes, it's being called a rifle. Just like a certain mesmer weapon is called a greatsword but is it used like one?

I see. So now we're claiming that Engineers are magic-based? Because that's the rationale behind Mesmer greatsword. If that's so, then the state of Engineer is an even more depressing affair because it just confirms that even when given such opportunity we still manage to end up with the worst implementations possible for our profession. What are we supposed to be then Tyria's comic relief?

[Dawdler.8521]

@Iozeph.5617 said:So now we're claiming that Engineers are magic-based?No, we're claiming that the rifle isnt really a rifle. Or are you claming that rifles being able to shoot into the ground and make you fly with no ill effect is normal?

[Iozeph.5617]

So if it's not a rifle, if it isn't a shotgun, and if it isn't a bazooka from TF2(which is used to jump in a similar fashion) then the only alternative is that it's a joke - which makes it right at home in the hands of an Engineer. Glad we've got that out of the way.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Iozeph.5617 said:So if it's not a rifle, if it isn't a shotgun, and if it isn't a bazooka from TF2(which is used to jump in a similar fashion) then the only alternative is that it's a joke - which makes it right at home in the hands of an Engineer. Glad we've got that out of the way.

See, now you get it. And when you want tp take it to the next level, you equip confetti shooting pistols.

[Iozeph.5617]

I still have some pop gun skins from winter's day. Or super adventure pistol skins. But most of the comedy from playing these weapons is completely unintended.

[Matoro.9708]

@Samug.6512 said:I like the OP's idea to re-make turrets into ammo skills. This would allow more interactions with Toolkit, easier balance, bigger range of gameplay types and more possibilities of various traits. sth like:Rifle turret - 3 ammo, each use rapidly fires 5 projectilesRocket turret - 3 ammo, fires a rocket that applies vulnerabilityFlame turret - 2 ammo, burst of flames that applies burningThumper turret - 2 ammo, AoE knock-down.Heal turret - don't you dare touching my heal turret. It's a perfect ability.Obviously toolbelt skills would need a reworks. Each ability is a channel, quite long ammo recharge skills that are speed up by auto-attacking with Toolkit. Firearms could get a new grandmaster trait that increases ammo count, inventions turret trait could be reworked to modify how turrets work (swap power turrets to condi turrets, make them apply boons...). Supply crate gets a major rework, no ideas for it.

I also really like it. One could go as far to remove auto attacks to really make them active, skill based utilities, and only use their ammo skills. OP's suggestion feels too passive still and just a nerf to uptime.

Supply crate either gets replaced with a new turret (better version of Deployable Mortar Kit? Which is now a turret btw) or buffs current turrets.

We would ideally want some sort of ammo replenishment system. And heal turret would have 1 ammo, for 'cleansing burst' or something new, but the aoe regen should probably stay - sort of its thing. I would pool it into new turret traits.

The more I think about it, the more I want this system - it feels like a big step forward. It solves a lot of problems, lets scaling stats be predictable in effect, hurts AFKers - and already feels cohesive with gadget ammo skills. I think this is really a strong move for the devs.

[Antycypator.9874]

I think overheat mechanic should be reworked in complete other way.

Blast Module could lock all holo's skills (but only spec skills like Laser Disc and Prime Light Beam). Reaching heat treshold could unlock your skills and heat could be lost only by using these skills (e.g. Prime Light Beam -50%). Your holo skills would be powered by Photon Forge's heat.