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Make Engineer Shield More Useful


Lucinda Pancrasia.3098

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As I want to state in this post I do love the Engineer profession and I do believe the ideas and content are going in the right direction but with ingenuity in the field often find other places that need that ingenuity to shine, for example The Shield. The current abilities of the shield are:

  • Magnetic Shield (engineer skill): Create a magnetic field that reflects projectiles and can be released to push back foes. Duration: 3 seconds
  • Static Shield (engineer skill): Electrify your shield, preparing to throw it at foes. If you are hit, the shield discharges, stunning your nearby attacker. Stun: 1 Second, Block Duration: 2 Seconds. Now I want to let you all know that in certain situations not all situations is where these abilities shine, but I believe as a weapon or shield in this case as a profession weapon it needs to be good in all circumstances and with how the game is six years old and shield barely gets touched by a lot of players it seems it is in need of some fine-tuning or a upgrade. First I would like to make my suggestions:

First Ability to replace Magnetic Shield --> Deploy Shield Generator Turret: [Mind you the turret is probably going to be skinned as the same one with a bit tweaked display as the one in WvW shield generator] A shield generator turret is deployed creating a bubble shield around the turret and is stationary, the size of the turret is enough to guard at least 10 players within it's confines. As it's first active ability when deployed because that is what all turrets do. It for a duration of 3 seconds creates a electrical barrier of the bubble causing damage to anyone attempting to pass through the barrier at the time then it goes away. The turret itself will have the same secondary ability as normal turrets of exploding the turret early or picking it up to reduce the cool-down of the turret. The shield is able to block projectiles from outside the barrier and those who are inside will be unharmed by projectile damage. This takes care of ranged targets for the respective time the shield is deployed while minor take down of melee targets who would run through the shield. [Keep in mind that means targets can still shoot out from the bubble shield to deal damage to those outside of the shield generator]

As this is a Shield Skill and a Turret Skill the relative chosen specializations that effect the shield and turrets will also work on the Shield Generator Turret. If a suggestion would have it I would either have the Resistance boon or Aegis boon be it's time productive ability for the one turret as it will already be having protection boon.

  1. Over Shield (Inventions Specialization for Engineer): Shield skills gain recharge reduction and grant protection to nearby allies. Protection on you gains increased damage reduction.
  2. Experimental Turrets (Inventions Specialization for Engineer): Turrets create a reflective barrier when built and grant boons to allies around them on a regular interval.[As I suggested before I would think either resistance boon or aegis boon would be good for this turrets interval.]

So with this as a suggestion and I hope that it can be seen by some Arena Net employee so perhaps this idea is used I am not sure how I can make it so that it is seen but I do like to make this as a suggestion, and I am fine for it to be used by anyone I just wanted to put this out here that the Shield on engineers could use a little love as it has great potential to be a shield that all Engineers would like to use for the future. I will be thinking of a skill to replace Static Shield later on of course.

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@RisenHowl.2419 said:Shield on engi is great as is, the real problem is your only mh weapon is a pistol with garbage damage

Blast finisher, reflect, knockback, block, stun, and a ranged daze x2. Shield is just fine.

Yup pistols are the issue. I regularly see thieves do 3 to 5 times the damage an engineer does using skill 1 on a main hand pistol. I’ve given up on them and switched back to power rifle. Seriously considered salvaging my ascended pistols just to reclaim space in my bank..

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Yeah, shield is actually really good once you get used to it. On prot holo, it can be used to impressive levels -- the only thing I would change would be increasing magnetic inversion's radius because it's TINY.

The problem is mainhand pistol is just atrocious. The only worthwhile skill on it is static shot.

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As stated by the others, shields are really good on their own (and prolly won't receive any changes) but they have no meaning outside a holo build cus pistols are almost useless and sword is the only other option for mainhand IF you have holosmith elite spec, so the main problem is the lack of decent MH weapons to combo with shield and create more viable MH/OH builds. Sadly i doubt anet will give us more weapon choices if not with another elite spec that would not solve the problem, and the other option is give a boost to pistol.Btw i liked the shield generator turret idea and would love to see it in game.

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@Vagrant.7206 said:

@DemonSeed.3528 said:I am comfortable the way shield is now however mainhand pistol could do with an update. Imagine if it got even one skill similar to unload or repeater. I don't know, just faster attack speed or more oomph to dmg, just anything at this point.

Imagine poison dart volley, but faster and without a cone spray.

Rapid fire style with a decent power coefficient. That change alone would make pistol viable

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@Vagrant.7206 said:Yeah, shield is actually really good once you get used to it. On prot holo, it can be used to impressive levels -- the only thing I would change would be increasing magnetic inversion's radius because it's TINY.

The problem is mainhand pistol is just atrocious. The only worthwhile skill on it is static shot.

This^^.

I don't believe it would break the game or the profession if they gave core engineers(all engineers essentially) weapon swap and mace as an option for main hand weapon. If they'd only clean house a bit with some of our less-used traits and gave us a traiting for main hand weapons(mace, sword, pistols,) to improve either their power damage or their swing/shot speeds. Call it Manual Dexterity, Rust Free, or whatever.

The old argument that we shouldn't have weapon swap because we have so many weapons with our kits doesn't hold as much water as it used to. And it isn't as though they're about to give our kits a second look after the gyro changes. If anything they'll probably nerf those too, given all the whingeing, and we'll be right back where we were or worse.

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@InsaneQR.7412 said:Id rather want to have to the toolkit improved. Shield is fine. Toolkit is a bit all over the place with condis and power and blocks and pulls etc.Some streamlining would be neat. Faster AA, more power oriented, no condis. Blocks and pulls can stay.

I'd feel a bit better about Tool kit if Smack, Whack, and Thwack applied some sort of benefit to the group/nearby friendlies the way they did for turrets- perhaps a small temporary increase in toughness or power damage to simulate better armour/weapon maintenance. That or for Gear Shield and Magnet to at least benefit from Overshield -especially given that Magnet is still so easily dodged or avoided via line of sight or uneven terrains. Perhaps then, even though Power Wrench is now a shadow of itself, there'd be more incentive to slot the kit. If that isn't possible I'd still rather have weapon swap and a new main hand weapon(mace) for core/all specs.

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in a time where power creep wasn't a thing, main hand pistol would have been much better. unfortunately, that time has passed. so yeah the pistol mainhand needs updating. offhand too, the speed of glue shot should see an increase for more reliable CC landing.one thing i would change on shield, is how long skill 5 lasts. i think another second of blocking would be nice. Then again, as others have pointed out, it also has 2x daze (one on the way out, one on the way back) a stun if you attack it in a specified range while it's casting....those are pretty nice to utilize. so it's debatable really. If not a second longer block, then maybe a shorter cooldown.Another possible thing, is maybe the velocity of the projectile on shield throw.

just my personal views on these.

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As many others have said, the shield is good enough. It's the MH pistol that's not good enough.I think they tried to make it somehow fine for both condi and power, but it doesn't work well. They could repurpose MH pistol as a proper condition weapon and introduce another MH weapon - this time for power builds - to the core engineer, but then the traits would have to be reworked as well. Thus i doubt they'll do something about it. We can only hope for some buff for MH pistol, i guess.

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