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@Tiilimon.6094 said:No hasnt changed, holo is awesome, and even core can do just fine. People are just too focused on dps numbers to understand this.

Indeed, anything can do fine in open world. Lets focus on the instanced content instead:Core engi is non-existent in end-game content. As a support it can only bring outstanding heal, and some boons. Sadly, the better your group is, the more they'll care about the boons, than your healing. As a DPS, it not only falls behind in sustained damage, but it doesn't have a good spike either, so it is a no-go for both fractals and raids. The only thing it could excel is doing condi dps, if weren't for the complex rotation.

Scrapper is better, but it suffers the same issues.

Holosmith is a good pick to DPS, although it is a bit under the popular picks. I still saw old speedrun videos, where a DH was replaced with a holo, only because the player preferred it. Condi holosmith is okay, considering its rotation. As for support, it is pretty much the same as the other engi specs.

To the original post:

Firstly, they should actually finish holosmith. It still lacks heat interaction on 4 weapons, and exceed skills doesn't have a 100+ heat bonus for ECSU. That would bump the damage into the higher tier DPS category.Secondly, they should remove toolbelt lockout for overheating, while PBM is equipped. It would give back PBM builds some utility, since they would be free to use their toolbelt CC skills at any time.To increase core engis viability, they could balance Explosives, Firearms and Tools to give similar damage boost, and picking all three would raise the engis damage to be similar to holosmith. Holo would need shaves in the meantime, so it wouldn't become an absolute beast.

On the support department: The engineer needs better boons to share, or a better unique buff for the party. Currently Pinpoint Distribution competes with Thermal Vision. The last time I checked the +100 condi damage gave less damage boost party-wise, than what Thermal Vision gave to the engi alone. An another problem is, the engis main gimmick - the condi cleanse - isn't that needed in PvE, while beign pretty strong in competitive modes.Ways to implement the changes could consist of reworking the turrets, or replacing Toss Elixir skills with Break Elixir skills, turning them into a PBAoE, then adding traits to Alchemy that boosts these toolbelt skills.

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Hey, dude.

Have you done PVE as the support? And if you do.. are you sure you were the support and there wasn't another person cleaning all the condis, lol?

Because between Ascalonian Catacombs and the tier 100 fractal, condi cleaning is the most important job of the healer in the 5 man instanced content. It's a ridiculous statement to make regarding the support play of this game, as often you could pop all the heals in the world and the conditions would still shred your party to bits if not cleansed.

The health pools themselves hardly need active attention, as there's so many passive forms of healing going out from all sorts of traits and combos. The occasional chunks of actual damage are quite easy to deal with as they don't ever come as a surprise, but are the result of either standing in an aoe or not dodging a very slow attack that has voice, text, animation and effect signs to tell that it's about to hit :D

Holo deals more damage because it sacrifices 6 seconds of being versatile(our class specialty btw) to deal damage every time the forge is popped and the form can overheat and reduce you to a liability.

If versatility could be put on a meter like dps, this class would top it for sure.

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@"Tiilimon.6094" said:Hey, dude.

Have you done PVE as the support? And if you do.. are you sure you were the support and there wasn't another person cleaning all the condis, lol?

I'm pretty sure. You can use:

Because between Ascalonian Catacombs and the tier 100 fractal, condi cleaning is the most important job of the healer in the 5 man instanced content. It's a ridiculous statement to make regarding the support play of this game, as often you could pop all the heals in the world and the conditions would still shred your party to bits if not cleansed.

Shattered Observatory isn't the one I would say condi is problematic, unless you get afflicted. I would recommend a full cleansing engi build on Sirens Reef, and on Slothasor... maybe on Soulless Horror, if are confident in your add-pushing game. (Not having to swap chars for river is a small extra bonus)

The health pools themselves hardly need active attention

And that is why people doesn't care about heal output, they only care about boons, an unique buffs, like Assassin's Presence+Alacrity, or 25 Might + Fury + Spirits.

Holo deals more damage because it sacrifices 6 seconds of being versatile(our class specialty btw) to deal damage every time the forge is popped and the form can overheat and reduce you to a liability.

The problems here are: Holo forge gives easy access to damage, mobility, cc, and finishers. It is basicly having a second, really overloaded weapon as a prof. mechanic. And because of that, core and scrapper can't really catch up as damage dealers. And honestly, you only give up your normal weapon skills, and kits if you enter forge, and doesn't run PBM.

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They probably need to bugfix dragonhunter's zealous Blade I think , as it's reportedly still providing +10% damage. This makes dragonhunter a safer pick if you're looking for power damage.

If you look at engineer's No Scope the ferocity is conditional on fury.

It's also been reported that Solar Focsing Lens is buggy as well.

A point of concern is you can't pick up bundles while in photon forge as it counts as a transformation. Would be nice to not be locked out of toolbelt skills with Photon Forge either.

If you mean core engi then grenades,toolkit,flamethrower and bomb kit need to somehow be more effective while using core engineer but not holo/scrapper. Perhaps turrets could be recharged when picked up or something as they aren't typically run.

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I think that all incarnations of the Engi are in a pretty good place right now, although Holo needs a few tweaks.

The thing to understand about the meta is this: If a class isn't super great at the meta, it doesn't matter very much because PvE in this game is easy and if you swap a good class out with a bad class your team is still going to win unless they're terrible.

It might take slightly longer, but its going to happen. Class selection, build and skill mostly shines with PUG carries.

The reason people restrict it to certain classes is just to make it faster and somewhat easier and more convenient, that's all. Unless you're giving up something very vital to the group like Quickness, in the grand scheme of things it just doesn't matter.

The game was specifically designed so that players aren't that different to each other, and can do most of the same things.

@Infusion.7149 said:They probably need to bugfix dragonhunter's zealous Blade I think , as it's reportedly still providing +10% damage. This makes dragonhunter a safer pick if you're looking for power damage.

If you look at engineer's No Scope the ferocity is conditional on fury.

It's also been reported that Solar Focsing Lens is buggy as well.

A point of concern is you can't pick up bundles while in photon forge as it counts as a transformation. Would be nice to not be locked out of toolbelt skills with Photon Forge either.

If you mean core engi then grenades,toolkit,flamethrower and bomb kit need to somehow be more effective while using core engineer but not holo/scrapper. Perhaps turrets could be recharged when picked up or something as they aren't typically run.

Toolkit is the weakest of these , I think, and its only purpose has always been to give Core Engi a true melee weapon set, so it'd be nice if it could be worked to be more similar to Scrapper's Hammer without replacing it on Scrapper.

I feel like Grenades, Bombs, and Flamethrower are still okay and pretty strong, but they could use some modernising.

Turrets used to be insanely strong a few years ago but they've been nerfed numerous times because of their utility in PvP/WvW, but they're still Core Engi's main option for support when they don't have an elite spec.

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@Tiilimon.6094 said:If versatility could be put on a meter like dps, this class would top it for sure.

What versatility? Average cc at best, crap burst, average to below average sustained dps, no boons. It can bring a smoke field for stealth but so can ranger. It can never be a supp in fractals because it doesnt bring quickness or alacrity. Guardian is much more versatile than engi.The only thing keeping it alive in endgame groups is the music exploit.Engi is just the new necro in pve. No support at all. it competes with weaver as a pure dps but shocker, it lacks a lot in that area. burst is also nonexistant without pre stacked heat which is just a pain to do with the ecsu trait.

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I say the way to make them better for PvE is to make them more fun.

In my opinion, I think expanding the Elite Spec's Gimmicks will help the Engi a bit.

For example, Holosmith has a gimmick for the Sword where it obtains certain bonuses for each skill if the Heat is at a certain high range.This gimmick can be adjusted to also be in all Engineer weapons as well such as High heat boost Rifle Basic Attack Damage, Net Shot obtaining a DoT effect due to the Net becoming highly Heated, Blunderbuss apply more bleeding stacks, Overcharged Shot does a 2nd hit that is 50% less than the first Hit, and Jumpshot place a AoE Fire Field in the area where the Player Lands.

Scrapper can have their Damage or Special effects applied to their Weapon skills based on what Drone or Drones they have out.

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@"Hannelore.8153" said:I think that all incarnations of the Engi are in a pretty good place right now, although Holo needs a few tweaks.

The thing to understand about the meta is this: If a class isn't super great at the meta, it doesn't matter very much because PvE in this game is easy and if you swap a good class out with a bad class your team is still going to win unless they're terrible.

If you're talking about open world PvE, I might agree with you. But when most people refer to PvE, they're talking about high-end PvE. Fractals and raids.

Both of these places are where core engineer and scrapper are subpar. Core engineer requires you to play a piano for DPS that isn't as good as much easier classes. Scrapper's DPS is pretty laughable in most circumstances unless your team is bad.

Core engi/scrapper can only provide raw heals and minor buffs, not churn out the game-changing buffs that firebrand, druid, or chrono can. Now sure, with my scrapper healer build, I can hard carry almost any PUG through fractals. But it's not doing much besides raw healing/tanking/damage mitigation, which good groups shouldn't need to worry about as much.

Holo is the only engineer spec that is competitive in these scenarios, and even then it's not ideal.

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I agree with @Vagrant.7206. In open world Core and Scrapper work great, as long as you do not have anything to compare them with. The instant a decent class with decent damage or support-features appears, you start questioning your own purpose. In more demanding content, effort/result ratio is laughable. We press lots of buttons, others press one and usually get better results.

The fear is, if Scrapper/Core get any stronger some day again, it will affect sPvP and WvW for sure. And that just starts this horrible downward spiral once again. That is the first suggestion I would like to make with improving Engineer in PvE. Separate PvE and Competitive 100 %. If PvE gets a skill changed/replaced/empowered, it is not going to happen in Competitive. Separate changes, separate skills.

Core should be able to apply a defensive/utility buff to allied players. The idea is to give the buff an enhancement in one of our traitlines, which adds an extra effect. For example increases outgoing damage & reduces incoming damage by 2 %. Accessible with Core either via a Trait (like Pinpoint Distribution) or adding this bonus as a side-effect to Superspeed. Now if you play one of the two Elite Specializations, you can pick a trait to specialize that Enhancement. If used on Holosmith, outgoing damage increase will be lifted to 4 %, lowering damage reduction to 1 %. If used on the Scrapper, incoming damage reduction will be lifted to 4 %, lowering damage increase to 1 %. That way we could have a support feature on Core, that is not too powerful. A support option on both Elite Specs that allows us to stay true to our design but still be useful to our group.

One of the major problems on Core is the piano-player. That makes it so difficult to access for new players. Quickly rotating through all kits, just to make sure you only use the most efficient skills. We could use conditional kit enhancements. If an Elite Specialization is NOT equipped:

  • FT has a chance of 50 % to add another burn stack on critical hits
  • Grenade kit has a chance of 50 % to cause the barrage on critical hits
  • Bomb kit has a chance of 50 % that an explosion will cause a blast-finisher
  • Elexir Gun has a chance of 50 % to grant a stack of poison to enemies/regeneration to allies
  • Tool Kit has a chance of 50 % to cause confusion on critical hits
  • Motar Kit has a chance of 50 % to double the explosion range

This mechanic would only activate if a kit is used while no Elite Specialization is traited and only after staying 5+ seconds in that kit. Promoting to camp certain kits and enjoying them instead of rotating through them like a maniac.

Turrets! Since they changed the overcharge-mechanic to be automatic, we lost control over our turrets. They delayed the activation so our combos still work, but their idea of removing the create-to-detonate mentality of the turrets did not work out at all. In the current form we can enhance the turrets with a reflective dome, which is not very long active. In addition we can trait the turrets to give buffs to our allies, which have very low duration and are mostly outdated nowadays. That also applies to our ability to buff might-stacks. Almost everyone can buff them now, a lot more reliable and constant than we do.

So I would remove the blast-finisher. That makes them useless. We could re-design them to Symbols.

  • Thumper Turret = Creates shockwaves in a small area that stuns and taunts enemies and grants pulsing stability to allies.
  • Rifle Turret = Hits targeted enemies with rifle shots that cause bleeding and grants pulsing might to allies.
  • Flame Turret = Hits targeted enemies with flame-thrower that causes burn and grants pulsing blind to nearby enemies.
  • Rocket Turret = Hits targeted enemies with rockets which also CC them and grants Vulnerability on enemies.
  • Healing Turret = Heals yourself (base heal 4-5k as a compensation to the loss of the blast-combo), heals allies around you and pulsing resurrection in a small area (like the F Gyro and the Elixir, but slower). Compared to the Medic Gyro, more powerful stationary. Less mobile, what turrets are by design anyway.

Upon detonation or destruction, each of those turrets grants 5 Seconds of Superspeed. The turrets are invulnerable for 1s after deployment and can be detonated 5s after deployment or later.

I know touching the Eternal Light, the healing-turret is considered heresy by some of you. But it has been almost 6 years. How many times did we ever agree on something?

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