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Why so few engineers?


Echoherb.6528

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Is it because it's complicated? Elementalists are complicated but there's way more of those. Is it the theme? I can kind of see people wanting more of a magically themed class in this kind of game, but at the same time there are plenty of warriors and thieves. Is it because they are difficult to play? Once again I think ele is also very difficult to play and I see a lot of those. I'm curious what's causes so few people to play them.

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It is complicated if you want to be optimal and want to squeeze out the juice out of every little interaction you have but overall you'll find engis that don't do that, despise complexity and do sub-optimal builds for the sake of simplicity.

I think it's more of a theme thing since it doesn't fill the typical fantasy niche that appeals to most people.

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@Lunateric.3708 said:It is complicated if you want to be optimal and want to squeeze out the juice out of every little interaction you have but overall you'll find engis that don't do that, despise complexity and do sub-optimal builds for the sake of simplicity.

I think it's more of a theme thing since it doesn't fill the typical fantasy niche that appeals to most people.

Yeah I'm thinking it would be more of a theme thing, because even if what you said about it being complicated were true, you'd still see more at lower levels or in world pve. Most people aren't trying to squeeze out the juice out of every little interaction, they are just casually playing the game.

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@Echoherb.6528 said:Is it because it's complicated? Elementalists are complicated but there's way more of those. Is it the theme? I can kind of see people wanting more of a magically themed class in this kind of game, but at the same time there are plenty of warriors and thieves. Is it because they are difficult to play? Once again I think ele is also very difficult to play and I see a lot of those. I'm curious what's causes so few people to play them.

Several reasons:

  • Unintuitive design
    • By that I mean that primary weapons are weak, most of your real damage is in your kits, or PF.
  • Aesthetically different from other classes (tech instead of magic)
  • The interesting skills and traits are objectively worse than the boring ones.
  • Except for PF, not a very flashy class.
  • Takes more effort to get the same result other classes get
  • Lack of effort from ANet devs to keep the class up to date. Lots of traits and skills have languished for years with no real change.
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@Vagrant.7206 said:

@"Echoherb.6528" said:Is it because it's complicated? Elementalists are complicated but there's way more of those. Is it the theme? I can kind of see people wanting more of a magically themed class in this kind of game, but at the same time there are plenty of warriors and thieves. Is it because they are difficult to play? Once again I think ele is also very difficult to play and I see a lot of those. I'm curious what's causes so few people to play them.

Several reasons:
  • Unintuitive design
    • By that I mean that primary weapons are weak, most of your real damage is in your kits, or PF.
  • Aesthetically different from other classes (tech instead of magic)
  • The interesting skills and traits are objectively worse than the boring ones.
  • Except for PF, not a very flashy class.
  • Takes more effort to get the same result other classes get
  • Lack of effort from ANet devs to keep the class up to date. Lots of traits and skills have languished for years with no real change.

Makes sense, especially the part about interesting skills being worse and it not being a flashy class (no clue what "PF" is). Although I still see more warriors and thiefs and those aren't very flashy classes either.

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@Echoherb.6528 said:

@Echoherb.6528 said:Is it because it's complicated? Elementalists are complicated but there's way more of those. Is it the theme? I can kind of see people wanting more of a magically themed class in this kind of game, but at the same time there are plenty of warriors and thieves. Is it because they are difficult to play? Once again I think ele is also very difficult to play and I see a lot of those. I'm curious what's causes so few people to play them.

Several reasons:
  • Unintuitive design
    • By that I mean that primary weapons are weak, most of your real damage is in your kits, or PF.
  • Aesthetically different from other classes (tech instead of magic)
  • The interesting skills and traits are objectively worse than the boring ones.
  • Except for PF, not a very flashy class.
  • Takes more effort to get the same result other classes get
  • Lack of effort from ANet devs to keep the class up to date. Lots of traits and skills have languished for years with no real change.

Makes sense, especially the part about interesting skills being worse and it not being a flashy class (no clue what "PF" is). Although I still see more warriors and thiefs and those aren't very flashy classes either.

PF is photon forge.

And yes, but warrior and thief both have visually unique methods of standing out. Engineer is the least visually distinct class (explosions are probably the flashiest things besides photon forge).

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@Vagrant.7206 said:

@Echoherb.6528 said:Is it because it's complicated? Elementalists are complicated but there's way more of those. Is it the theme? I can kind of see people wanting more of a magically themed class in this kind of game, but at the same time there are plenty of warriors and thieves. Is it because they are difficult to play? Once again I think ele is also very difficult to play and I see a lot of those. I'm curious what's causes so few people to play them.

Several reasons:
  • Unintuitive design
    • By that I mean that primary weapons are weak, most of your real damage is in your kits, or PF.
  • Aesthetically different from other classes (tech instead of magic)
  • The interesting skills and traits are objectively worse than the boring ones.
  • Except for PF, not a very flashy class.
  • Takes more effort to get the same result other classes get
  • Lack of effort from ANet devs to keep the class up to date. Lots of traits and skills have languished for years with no real change.

Makes sense, especially the part about interesting skills being worse and it not being a flashy class (no clue what "PF" is). Although I still see more warriors and thiefs and those aren't very flashy classes either.

PF is photon forge.

And yes, but warrior and thief both have visually unique methods of standing out. Engineer is the least visually distinct class (explosions are probably the flashiest things besides photon forge).

I wasn't around for that but I believe it wasn't the case always, think I read somewhere explosive effects from grenades and orbital strike got toned down a ton

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why play engineer in PvE when there are better and easyer dps for both condi and power? Don't reply me to go watch a dps benchmark on youtube ,it's useless,another class can do nearly the same dps with lower effort AND providing way more support.

Why play engineer in WvW ? Well for roaming it should still work pretty well , small scale fights too .....but forget the massive big fights , there are only 4 classes welcome in squads for WvW : scourge , firebrand , weaver , heralds .Now there is this warrior bouble mechanic that may throw warriors into the action sometimes , but aside from this classes , the rest is junk because they are inadeguate for both damage and support in big scale fights , and squads will instakick you.Boon conversion engineer?Just an optimistic engineer feature , that doesn't work with the actual WvW main mechanics : boon corruption .The more you convert condis into boons,the more enemy scrouge will corrupt your boons into condis.Basically you would be a scourge dream.

Why play engineer in PvP : like small WvW roaming , engineer can work there too.

Engineer was the hardest class to play some time after realease , but now,it's not anymore the hardest one ,from long time already . <Every class has now the f1-f5 ability , is not somothing unique anymore , plus , engineer was the hardest class also for the very disconnected traits that got 0 sinergy for long time ,but were still able to be usefull if well played with gppd timings.Now we have some trait sinergy , but the whole picture is just underperforming compared to something else.

Don't get me wrong ,the class is good , bit is for a small niche of players .

You must like the theme first of all , and you must be ready to get pushed out form PvE raids and from WvW squads because peoples prefer something that performs better than us .

All of the above are mine opinions after i played this class since the release of this game .

I'm starting to play herald only from 1 week,and only because i'm mainly a WvW player and i'm tired of get kicked out of squads , sometimes i like to play with other peoples too.... after years of FORCED solo WVW playing now.... and i get tons more bags , i do tons more damage(no more projectile reflections that can stop my dps..yeaaaah..) , i get way more support sitting in squads (condi removal and guardians healing that are priorytized for party/squad memebers) ,etc. etc.

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Engineer are few because they are too complex to play for too little reward. Eles are also complex, but their reward is much, much better.There is also a "vicious circle" in popularity: since less people play Engie, new people prefer not to play Engie, which leads to fewer people playing Engie, etc.

If Engie were declared "meta" in something, people would probably flock back into the profession again. As long as we remain high risk/low reward, we will be few.

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I like engi after several years i finally gave it an honest weekend of play time (never had before) and I had to dumb it down for myself just to make it bearable. I had to us elixers for half of my utility just because it makes it more simple to play. Started with core condi bomb and worked my way up to power holo both of which were pretty fun although holo is much simpler to play its enjoyable being able to go into holo mode for an instant power boost.

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Engineer is rusty,outdated, under-powered, underdeveloped, unloved, and underappreciated and inundated with inconsistencies. "That was a mouthful"Kits are weak, and weapon dps ie. rifle/pistol is a joke. Pfft i'd expect even a 300% damage increase wouldn't do much, Mortar is a runner up for joke of the year, merely someone to annoy people in WvW "and kill afk'rs" The "new" condi cleansing spec is so pathetically weak in the dps department "it uses pistol/shield" that it is a total waste of time the programmers spent in restructuring it. Most of the "good" engineers in Wvw are what I think are called "Kitten Scripters" aka hackers who 'borrow" the code, so not technically a hacker just someone who knows who to copy/paste from.The future of the engineer looks bleak, we got a dps lightbright spec, but it's cost/reward in the dps department isn't worth much if anything. it's a "oh that looks fun I'll try that out, and then have to go to a different class to actually do stuff unless in a futile sense of pity they allow you to play an engineer.

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Well the biggest issue imho is that ele offers something for it's complexity - biggest dps of all professions as well as strong healer/support builds.Engi despite it's complexity seems to be running with rest of the pack in terms of dps and his support game for party is clearly weaker.

So bottom line - less bang for your buck, at least in PvE.

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Its basically a melee DPS class with some utility. Obviously Ele as ranged is more preferred.

There exactly isnt lot of weapon choices either .... Lot of the kits are so undertuned for the elite specs.

Its fun for solo easy content but when you wanna solo harder content, you rather take something that can deal damage while tanking like guardian, rev or warrior, Or run away and deal bunch of damage from far away.

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Frankly, kit-swapping is annoying as a game-mechanic.

It's basically conceding that your limited 10-slot hot bar doesn't work, but instead of actually fixing it by giving your players 5-10 extra slots, you make them swap between multiple sets of them without showing them the off-cooldowns.

This is... bearable... for a single weapon. Add a bunch of kits to a class which already has more slots via toolbelt, and I keep wondering why I have 50 weak skills instead of 10 strong ones if the game is designed around a 10-slot hot bar.

Engineer could be a great class. In another game.

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Because over the last 6 years engy has been one of the weakest classes in the game, whilst also having required more effort to play (though this is less so now).

The history of engy in this game is basically it has been between decent and broken OP in PvP, in PvE between sub-par and okay, and in WvW it has been decent for roaming/small group, for guild raids it has been sub-par most of the game, bar a brief spell of scrapper and for zergs it has been surplus to requirements the entire game.

Now compare that to guard, ele, mesmer, etc and work out why there are few engys.

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i think not many engineers around because they aren't as strong as other professions. They were supposed to kind of be the jack of all trades profession, but they don't really fulfill that title since only few builds actually work on an engineer. maybe even less than few. Scrapper just got a nice little buff, and some traits reworked/changed, but after the recent changes, it can no longer play every role at once to an acceptable level, like other professions can. Which is a design flaw for other professions' builds and traits, that needs to be fixed. no profession should be able to do more than one thing GREAT/meta level (i.e. burst damage, tanking, sustained damage, etc). But as it stands, the meta builds can currently perform more than one, or all roles, to a meta level, blurring the lines of what a role should be. Engi is most balanced currently, and that's why it does not shine much, because you can't overperform in more than one role at a time anymore.

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@Vagrant.7206 said:

@TwiceDead.1963 said:I see so many of em in WvW though...

Doing what exactly?

Mostly roaming in small groups, although I see a lot of em in zergs as well. Can't speak for their effectiveness in zergs, but small-scale they can be pretty damn ferocious. Mostly Holo's though, don't see many core builds or scrappers... If any Scrappers at all.

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@mauried.5608 said:Its sad that in this game everyone seems so fixated on maximum dps, kill monsters as quick as possible, and get as many rewards as possible in the least possible time, that the concept of playing the game just for fun is totally lost.Which is why I play Engineers because they are fun.

It's not particularly fun for engineer when your build isn't optimized. Leveling can be really slow going.

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