Upcoming Engineer Balance Changes

[mortrialus.3062]

@Lunateric.3708 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Manuhell.2759 said:

@Xaylin.1860 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

Fatal Frenzy: This trait no longer gives boons. Instead, while in berserk mode, this trait reduces toughness by 300

Throw this on one of the Holosmith Minors, too.

While I'm not against it in general, you need to consider that Holosmiths already get a penalty when it comes to using Kits.

That berserker minor trait also gives bonuses, though. Funny how he wanted holos to get only the toughness reduction and not all the other stats. Here is the full description.

Fatal Frenzy: This trait no longer gives boons. Instead, while in berserk mode, this trait reduces toughness by 300, increases power by 300, and increases condition damage by 300.

You already have a trait that provides better levels of damage with Photon Forge interaction.

Berserker is going to get a 20% damage mod in berserk, friend.

20% Physical Damage while Berserking is an optional Grandmaster trait that requires not picking the condition damage boosting grandmaster or the suvivability grandmaster.

At the end of the day, we will not see Berserkers 1vX like Prot-Holos. They will not be such easy, safe roaming and team fighting specs and all-rounders as rifle holosmith. And it's because not only does Holosmith provide a lot of effortless inherent sustain with Heat Therapy, but because Core Engineer Heals and the inventions and Alchemy specialization is leagues more powerful than any other class's equivalent including Warrior. Right now Berserker's best PvP spec if a meme one shot Gunflame build. It's like a worse Fresh Air weaver. This still won't change next patch and this build is in fact getting riskier to play.

[Josif.2015]

@Vagrant.7206 said:Poison Dart Volley: Projectiles fired by this skill no longer fire in a randomized cone. Updated skill facts to show the full attack damage rather than the damage of individual darts.

Knowing that the balance team cares very little for core engineer, I'm just glad that they are finally getting rid of the stupid cone pattern from Poison Dart Volley.

[Josif.2015]

@Vagrant.7206 said:

Engineer

• Poison Dart Volley: Projectiles fired by this skill no longer fire in a randomized cone. Updated skill facts to show the full attack damage rather than the damage of individual darts.

Knowing that the balance team cares very little about core engineer, I'm just glad that they are finally getting rid of the stupid cone pattern from Poison Dart Volley.

[Lunateric.3708]

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Lunateric.3708 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Manuhell.2759 said:

@Xaylin.1860 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

Fatal Frenzy: This trait no longer gives boons. Instead, while in berserk mode, this trait reduces toughness by 300

Throw this on one of the Holosmith Minors, too.

While I'm not against it in general, you need to consider that Holosmiths already get a penalty when it comes to using Kits.

That berserker minor trait also gives bonuses, though. Funny how he wanted holos to get only the toughness reduction and not all the other stats. Here is the full description.

Fatal Frenzy: This trait no longer gives boons. Instead, while in berserk mode, this trait reduces toughness by 300, increases power by 300, and increases condition damage by 300.

You already have a trait that provides better levels of damage with Photon Forge interaction.

Berserker is going to get a 20% damage mod in berserk, friend.

20% Physical Damage while Berserking is an optional Grandmaster trait that requires not picking the condition damage boosting grandmaster or the suvivability grandmaster.

At the end of the day, we will not see Berserkers 1vX like Prot-Holos. They will not be such easy, safe roaming and team fighting specs and all-rounders as rifle holosmith. And it's because not only does Holosmith provide a lot of effortless inherent sustain with Heat Therapy, but because Core Engineer Heals and the inventions and Alchemy specialization is leagues more powerful than any other class's equivalent including Warrior. Right now Berserker's best PvP spec if a meme one shot Gunflame build. It's like a worse Fresh Air weaver. This still won't change next patch and this build is in fact getting riskier to play.

I think the issue here is you're treating personal opinions as facts. You quoted a trait and I told you there's an equivalent elsewhere.

Everything has upsides and downsides, you're just particularly biased towards engi.

[Ghos.1326]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@Don Vega Van Kain.9842 said:Engi have the lowest base main weapons in the game due to kits.

It's been a logical decision Before HOT (and elite spec.) , now, it's a disadvantage. They have to rework kits after the gyro and after, we can talk about nerfing anything in the profession.

I disagree with your second point. Engineer has been at a disadvantage since launch because of kits and the lack of a weapon swap. It's only when holosmith was introduced that we got a solution to this.

Kits definitely need a rework. They should have been a profession mechanic from the start. I say remove two toolbelt skills, F1 and F5 (then shift the slots around if needed) and make them kit slots. Then give scrapper an F5 ability/kit. This way both scrapper and holosmith gain meaningful tradeoffs.

Core also lacks two utility types since they have 5 skills instead of 4 per family. To normalize engineer they should remove underperforming skills like flame turret and elixir C, then add toss mine to it's own family (Traps). Next add a 5th uitility type. Glyphs for example could have a different effect based on the equipped kit/weapon.

To be particularly nitpicky, engineers have been on top of the meta a few times in the past. The engis didn't get a lot of buffs early on because Grouch was in charge of balancing them, and he was

really

good at playing the engineer. Ostricheggs was infamous with them, too. In particular, there were two core builds that became OP after awhile: the Drunk Engi, and the Turret Engi. Drunk Engi was so good that Anet introduced boon hate to deal with them. The turret engi could reliably 1v1 every other class on a point, because the CC and damage they could output was insane. Both of these were core builds.

Kit swapping isn't as cut and dry as advantage or disadvantage. The engineer gives up its weapon swap, sure, but its kit swapping effectively is a no-cooldown weapon swap, from which the engineer can choose 3 different kits to swap to at any time.

Yes but the drawback to this is one utility slot must be used in order to hold said kit. And if you run all kits, you potentially lose out on other utility things like Elixir S, Elixir C, etc etc.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@Ghos.1326 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@Don Vega Van Kain.9842 said:Engi have the lowest base main weapons in the game due to kits.

It's been a logical decision Before HOT (and elite spec.) , now, it's a disadvantage. They have to rework kits after the gyro and after, we can talk about nerfing anything in the profession.

I disagree with your second point. Engineer has been at a disadvantage since launch because of kits and the lack of a weapon swap. It's only when holosmith was introduced that we got a solution to this.

Kits definitely need a rework. They should have been a profession mechanic from the start. I say remove two toolbelt skills, F1 and F5 (then shift the slots around if needed) and make them kit slots. Then give scrapper an F5 ability/kit. This way both scrapper and holosmith gain meaningful tradeoffs.

Core also lacks two utility types since they have 5 skills instead of 4 per family. To normalize engineer they should remove underperforming skills like flame turret and elixir C, then add toss mine to it's own family (Traps). Next add a 5th uitility type. Glyphs for example could have a different effect based on the equipped kit/weapon.

To be particularly nitpicky, engineers have been on top of the meta a few times in the past. The engis didn't get a lot of buffs early on because Grouch was in charge of balancing them, and he was

really

good at playing the engineer. Ostricheggs was infamous with them, too. In particular, there were two core builds that became OP after awhile: the Drunk Engi, and the Turret Engi. Drunk Engi was so good that Anet introduced boon hate to deal with them. The turret engi could reliably 1v1 every other class on a point, because the CC and damage they could output was insane. Both of these were core builds.

Kit swapping isn't as cut and dry as advantage or disadvantage. The engineer gives up its weapon swap, sure, but its kit swapping effectively is a no-cooldown weapon swap, from which the engineer can choose 3 different kits to swap to at any time.

Yes but the drawback to this is one utility slot must be used in order to hold said kit. And if you run all kits, you potentially lose out on other utility things like Elixir S, Elixir C, etc etc.

That's more of a knock against other utilities than it is a against kits. In sPVP the engi meta wax x3 kits for years, because other utilities couldn't compete. The toolbelt skills compensated for the loss of a utility slot. The x3 kit builds are effectively running 27 different skills with unlimited access, which is far more than any other profession. The real problem the devs faced is how to make other utilities worthwhile.

[Ghos.1326]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Ghos.1326 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@Don Vega Van Kain.9842 said:Engi have the lowest base main weapons in the game due to kits.

It's been a logical decision Before HOT (and elite spec.) , now, it's a disadvantage. They have to rework kits after the gyro and after, we can talk about nerfing anything in the profession.

I disagree with your second point. Engineer has been at a disadvantage since launch because of kits and the lack of a weapon swap. It's only when holosmith was introduced that we got a solution to this.

Kits definitely need a rework. They should have been a profession mechanic from the start. I say remove two toolbelt skills, F1 and F5 (then shift the slots around if needed) and make them kit slots. Then give scrapper an F5 ability/kit. This way both scrapper and holosmith gain meaningful tradeoffs.

Core also lacks two utility types since they have 5 skills instead of 4 per family. To normalize engineer they should remove underperforming skills like flame turret and elixir C, then add toss mine to it's own family (Traps). Next add a 5th uitility type. Glyphs for example could have a different effect based on the equipped kit/weapon.

To be particularly nitpicky, engineers have been on top of the meta a few times in the past. The engis didn't get a lot of buffs early on because Grouch was in charge of balancing them, and he was

really

good at playing the engineer. Ostricheggs was infamous with them, too. In particular, there were two core builds that became OP after awhile: the Drunk Engi, and the Turret Engi. Drunk Engi was so good that Anet introduced boon hate to deal with them. The turret engi could reliably 1v1 every other class on a point, because the CC and damage they could output was insane. Both of these were core builds.

Kit swapping isn't as cut and dry as advantage or disadvantage. The engineer gives up its weapon swap, sure, but its kit swapping effectively is a no-cooldown weapon swap, from which the engineer can choose 3 different kits to swap to at any time.

Yes but the drawback to this is one utility slot must be used in order to hold said kit. And if you run all kits, you potentially lose out on other utility things like Elixir S, Elixir C, etc etc.

That's more of a knock against other utilities than it is a against kits. In sPVP the engi meta wax x3 kits for years, because other utilities couldn't compete. The toolbelt skills compensated for the loss of a utility slot. The x3 kit builds are effectively running 27 different skills with unlimited access, which is far more than any other profession. The real problem the devs faced is how to make other utilities worthwhile.

Actually the meta was 2 kits and elixir s, referring to cele rifle core engi from way back in the day. it utilized toolkit and grenade kit. toolkit provided some utility, like a block and a pull, and grenade kit provided one stack of blind 3x, some chill, and poison/bleeds. elixir s at the time didn't halt condition damage or effectiveness, so heavy condition pressure foiled its plans a lot (but back then conditions weren't being flown out of everyone's rear ends like it is now with some professions). the elite it ran was supply crate, most likely for the condition clear on healing turret deploy, as if i'm not mistaken the actual skill itself didn't clear condis and was introduced to this after the f5 toolbelt skill was brought in.

[Manuhell.2759]

The profession mechanic of the engineer is the toolbelt, though, not kits. Kits are optional, and we lack weapon swap whether or not kits are equipped. Whereas the toolbelt is always there, as any other class mechanic does for their relative profession.

We could surely discuss if the toolbelt ended up as a good tradeoff for the cost of a second weapon slot, and it is surely true that kits made balancing the engineer a mess - and they still do, as the sheer disparity of skills you can have between a no-kit build and a full-kit build is massive and hard to account for. Whatever the reason is, if they ever meant for kits to be our class mechanics, we would have got them as F-skills, as that is the only way to guarantee their presence in every build.A tradeoff is defined as giving up something in exchange for something else, after all. If that "something else" isn't there, the tradeoff just cannot work.

Historical blabber ahead.Given the state of the engineer at launch, and it being the least revealed class, i wouldn't be surprised if it was also the last one being designed. It showed in its skills, at least. Kits were basically repurposed environmental weapons - they didn't even use the actual weapon stats or sigils during the first months. Elixirs mostly reused the same animations or directly recycled other classes' skills. Dunno about turrets, but i wouldn't be surprised if they were initially born as enemies' attacks and reused later for engineers. I guess gadgets were the only utility that actually required more additional work, at least for some (Throw Mine was probably recycled from something else). And even the elites were mostly about recycling past works. Supply crate was about throwing turrets and med packs together and Elixir X was just recycling other elites (Mortar wasn't there at launch, and neither the elite toolbelt slot). So i wonder if the lack of weapon swap was put on just to not have to develop further weapons (and thus weapon skills) and leave the class with just 3 weapon combinations (and thus less weapon skills to work on - 12 skills in total between all core engi weapons).This also makes elementalists and engineers as the only classes to have such a trade-off in the core class. Elementalists gain multiple themed skillsets in exchange (balanced in a different way compared to normal weapon sets) and engineers get the toolbelt (and it also comes with a balancing that's more fluid between the utility and the related toolbelt in my opinion, as sometimes there are strong skills with weak toolbelts, and viceversa).

[coro.3176]

@Chaith.8256 said:

@Elmo Benchwarmer.3025 said:I'm patiently waiting for the day when ArenaNet figures out that Holosmith has no tradeoffs. :#

Until then, I'm glad the studio finally acknowledged that something is amiss. Hopefully the team keeps it up.

I can see the argument for not enough trade-off, but it has 2 obvious trade offs:

• Overheating is a purely negative drawback that Core doesn't have to worry about when they're going about their business. This is like the Berserker losing 300 toughness.
• Holosmith loses the Toolbelt half of their Elite skills.

???

I don't agree that these are trade-offs in any meaningful sense

• With proper heat management (really, pretty easy) a decent holo will basically never overheat unless they do so intentionally. In practice, heat acts more as a weapon swap cooldown for PF, but way better because of Heat Therapy, Laser's Edge, etc.
• Yes, the elite toolbelt is lost, but what is gained in Photon Forge is an entire kit worth of the best damage skills engineer has available. It's like trading a pawn for a queen. The power levels aren't even close.

.. but they could be!

• If heat was actually difficult to manage and you were very likely to overheat by going into PF unless you hold back and attack slowly, this would be a real trade off
• If the elite toolbelt skills were AMAZING - like ridiculously good - equal in value to the PF kit. I'm talking like Orbital Strike hitting in 0.5s and dealing 5x its current damage... like Toss Elixir X dealing damage, lasting longer, having a lower cooldown ... like Med Pack Drop repeating every 3 seconds 5x. It would have to be some pretty insane power creep and even then it would be a terrible idea because Scrapper would get it too, so you'd have to take away Scrapper's F5 as well.

Naturally, I prefer the first one. Holo is supposed to be a risky spec, but it currently is not.

[Iozeph.5617]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@Don Vega Van Kain.9842 said:Engi have the lowest base main weapons in the game due to kits.

It's been a logical decision Before HOT (and elite spec.) , now, it's a disadvantage. They have to rework kits after the gyro and after, we can talk about nerfing anything in the profession.

I disagree with your second point. Engineer has been at a disadvantage since launch because of kits and the lack of a weapon swap. It's only when holosmith was introduced that we got a solution to this.

Kits definitely need a rework. They should have been a profession mechanic from the start. I say remove two toolbelt skills, F1 and F5 (then shift the slots around if needed) and make them kit slots. Then give scrapper an F5 ability/kit. This way both scrapper and holosmith gain meaningful tradeoffs.

Core also lacks two utility types since they have 5 skills instead of 4 per family. To normalize engineer they should remove underperforming skills like flame turret and elixir C, then add toss mine to it's own family (Traps). Next add a 5th uitility type. Glyphs for example could have a different effect based on the equipped kit/weapon.

To be particularly nitpicky, engineers have been on top of the meta a few times in the past. The engis didn't get a lot of buffs early on because Grouch was in charge of balancing them, and he was

really

good at playing the engineer. Ostricheggs was infamous with them, too. In particular, there were two core builds that became OP after awhile: the Drunk Engi, and the Turret Engi. Drunk Engi was so good that Anet introduced boon hate to deal with them. The turret engi could reliably 1v1 every other class on a point, because the CC and damage they could output was insane. Both of these were core builds.

Kit swapping isn't as cut and dry as advantage or disadvantage. The engineer gives up its weapon swap, sure, but its kit swapping effectively is a no-cooldown weapon swap, from which the engineer can choose 3 different kits to swap to at any time.

Which might have been effective six years ago, but it's of dubious utility now because the kits not only underperform, we're also -even with workarounds, hampered by fighting not only latency, but the need for the extra steps of having to swap between so many kits -often for just a single button press/utility use from any given kit- before swapping it back out for another or a base weapon whereas our average opponent won't have to go through all that bother and will simply beat the snot out of us with what they have on their bar with zero fiddling about.

That's not versatile anymore because everybody else is more versatile now. All it is is fiddliness for fiddling's sake. A malignant growth/parasite that saps reaction time in modes where reaction time is most crucial. Is it any wonder that many engineer players jumped at the chance to play scrapper or holosmith if it meant not having to wade through all that rubbish? Is it any wonder that players who took one look at Engineers in the past and said, 'no' suddenly decided to get off the fence and play them when specs which offered an alternative to the clunkiness were introduced?

It'd be one thing if the kits didn't suck. But on average they do now. All that swapping, and alleged versatility speaks more of a dev team that took all the most annoying and unwieldy bits of other classes and bodged them together. That some people are still able to make it work is exceptional and to be applauded. That said, requiring that one have a top notch rig, lightning fast ISP, and the reflexes of a hamster on crack to play a seven year old game and barely keep their head above water against much easier to play alternatives seems just a bit much to me.

[Zex Anthon.8673]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@Don Vega Van Kain.9842 said:Engi have the lowest base main weapons in the game due to kits.

It's been a logical decision Before HOT (and elite spec.) , now, it's a disadvantage. They have to rework kits after the gyro and after, we can talk about nerfing anything in the profession.

I disagree with your second point. Engineer has been at a disadvantage since launch because of kits and the lack of a weapon swap. It's only when holosmith was introduced that we got a solution to this.

Kits definitely need a rework. They should have been a profession mechanic from the start. I say remove two toolbelt skills, F1 and F5 (then shift the slots around if needed) and make them kit slots. Then give scrapper an F5 ability/kit. This way both scrapper and holosmith gain meaningful tradeoffs.

Core also lacks two utility types since they have 5 skills instead of 4 per family. To normalize engineer they should remove underperforming skills like flame turret and elixir C, then add toss mine to it's own family (Traps). Next add a 5th uitility type. Glyphs for example could have a different effect based on the equipped kit/weapon.

To be particularly nitpicky, engineers have been on top of the meta a few times in the past. The engis didn't get a lot of buffs early on because Grouch was in charge of balancing them, and he was

really

good at playing the engineer. Ostricheggs was infamous with them, too. In particular, there were two core builds that became OP after awhile: the Drunk Engi, and the Turret Engi. Drunk Engi was so good that Anet introduced boon hate to deal with them. The turret engi could reliably 1v1 every other class on a point, because the CC and damage they could output was insane. Both of these were core builds.

Kit swapping isn't as cut and dry as advantage or disadvantage. The engineer gives up its weapon swap, sure, but its kit swapping effectively is a no-cooldown weapon swap, from which the engineer can choose 3 different kits to swap to at any time.

Core engi in the past didn't have to deal with as much boon/condition spam, and the damage meter wasn't cranked up to 100. In the past engi relied on it's superior cc to control a point and force someone off. Now with all the sustain/stability anyone can walk freely on point while the engi tickles them.

Regardless, none of this has anything to do with the fact that kits are poorly designed. As others have said the ability to swap between multiple kits freely hardly makes up for the lack of a weapon swap and the loss of a utility skill, especially with all the clunkiness associated with multi kitting. The fact that you can use any number between 1 and 5 kits is awful for balance. Ever wonder why elixir gun is the only kit with mobility and it does no damage, while grenade kit has the most damage yet has absolutely no utility?

There are excellent kit combination that are fun to play yet restrict your skill bar too much to be viable. Tool kit and bomb kit for example have excellent synergy, but by taking them you fill up two utility slots giving up the ability to take other more meaningful utilities like elixir s and rocket boots. It becomes too restricting when you have to fit your weapon swap on your utility bar along with cleanses, breakstuns, mobility, cc, damage mitigation etc. And keep in mind kits are the only way for an engi to get a melee weapon.

[Chaith.8256]

@coro.3176 said:I don't agree that these are trade-offs in any meaningful sense.

My literal words were: I can see the argument for not enough trade off: Obviously I KNOW that it's a favorable trade-off, look at how much better Holosmith is than core. It has trade-offs, facts, your opinion saying they're not meaningful, I somewhat agree, somewhat disagree as well because I've seen Holosmiths in gold/unranked Overheat 5 times in a match.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@Don Vega Van Kain.9842 said:Engi have the lowest base main weapons in the game due to kits.

It's been a logical decision Before HOT (and elite spec.) , now, it's a disadvantage. They have to rework kits after the gyro and after, we can talk about nerfing anything in the profession.

I disagree with your second point. Engineer has been at a disadvantage since launch because of kits and the lack of a weapon swap. It's only when holosmith was introduced that we got a solution to this.

Kits definitely need a rework. They should have been a profession mechanic from the start. I say remove two toolbelt skills, F1 and F5 (then shift the slots around if needed) and make them kit slots. Then give scrapper an F5 ability/kit. This way both scrapper and holosmith gain meaningful tradeoffs.

Core also lacks two utility types since they have 5 skills instead of 4 per family. To normalize engineer they should remove underperforming skills like flame turret and elixir C, then add toss mine to it's own family (Traps). Next add a 5th uitility type. Glyphs for example could have a different effect based on the equipped kit/weapon.

To be particularly nitpicky, engineers have been on top of the meta a few times in the past. The engis didn't get a lot of buffs early on because Grouch was in charge of balancing them, and he was

really

good at playing the engineer. Ostricheggs was infamous with them, too. In particular, there were two core builds that became OP after awhile: the Drunk Engi, and the Turret Engi. Drunk Engi was so good that Anet introduced boon hate to deal with them. The turret engi could reliably 1v1 every other class on a point, because the CC and damage they could output was insane. Both of these were core builds.

Kit swapping isn't as cut and dry as advantage or disadvantage. The engineer gives up its weapon swap, sure, but its kit swapping effectively is a no-cooldown weapon swap, from which the engineer can choose 3 different kits to swap to at any time.

Core engi in the past didn't have to deal with as much boon/condition spam, and the damage meter wasn't cranked up to 100. In the past engi relied on it's superior cc to control a point and force someone off. Now with all the sustain/stability anyone can walk freely on point while the engi tickles them.

Regardless, none of this has anything to do with the fact that kits are poorly designed. As others have said the ability to swap between multiple kits freely hardly makes up for the lack of a weapon swap and the loss of a utility skill, especially with all the clunkiness associated with multi kitting. The fact that you can use any number between 1 and 5 kits is awful for balance. Ever wonder why elixir gun is the only kit with mobility and it does no damage, while grenade kit has the most damage yet has absolutely no utility?

There are excellent kit combination that are fun to play yet restrict your skill bar too much to be viable. Tool kit and bomb kit for example have excellent synergy, but by taking them you fill up two utility slots giving up the ability to take other more meaningful utilities like elixir s and rocket boots. It becomes too restricting when you have to fit your weapon swap on your utility bar along with cleanses, breakstuns, mobility, cc, damage mitigation etc. And keep in mind kits are the only way for an engi to get a melee weapon.

---

@Iozeph.5617 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@Don Vega Van Kain.9842 said:Engi have the lowest base main weapons in the game due to kits.

It's been a logical decision Before HOT (and elite spec.) , now, it's a disadvantage. They have to rework kits after the gyro and after, we can talk about nerfing anything in the profession.

I disagree with your second point. Engineer has been at a disadvantage since launch because of kits and the lack of a weapon swap. It's only when holosmith was introduced that we got a solution to this.

Kits definitely need a rework. They should have been a profession mechanic from the start. I say remove two toolbelt skills, F1 and F5 (then shift the slots around if needed) and make them kit slots. Then give scrapper an F5 ability/kit. This way both scrapper and holosmith gain meaningful tradeoffs.

Core also lacks two utility types since they have 5 skills instead of 4 per family. To normalize engineer they should remove underperforming skills like flame turret and elixir C, then add toss mine to it's own family (Traps). Next add a 5th uitility type. Glyphs for example could have a different effect based on the equipped kit/weapon.

To be particularly nitpicky, engineers have been on top of the meta a few times in the past. The engis didn't get a lot of buffs early on because Grouch was in charge of balancing them, and he was

really

good at playing the engineer. Ostricheggs was infamous with them, too. In particular, there were two core builds that became OP after awhile: the Drunk Engi, and the Turret Engi. Drunk Engi was so good that Anet introduced boon hate to deal with them. The turret engi could reliably 1v1 every other class on a point, because the CC and damage they could output was insane. Both of these were core builds.

Kit swapping isn't as cut and dry as advantage or disadvantage. The engineer gives up its weapon swap, sure, but its kit swapping effectively is a no-cooldown weapon swap, from which the engineer can choose 3 different kits to swap to at any time.

Which might have been effective six years ago, but it's of dubious utility now because the kits not only underperform, we're also -even with workarounds, hampered by fighting not only latency, but the need for the extra steps of having to swap between so many kits -often for just a single button press/utility use from any given kit- before swapping it back out for another or a base weapon whereas our average opponent won't have to go through all that bother and will simply beat the snot out of us with what they have on their bar with zero fiddling about.

That's not versatile anymore because everybody else is more versatile now. All it is is fiddliness for fiddling's sake. A malignant growth/parasite that saps reaction time in modes where reaction time is most crucial. Is it any wonder that many engineer players jumped at the chance to play scrapper or holosmith if it meant not having to wade through all that rubbish? Is it any wonder that players who took one look at Engineers in the past and said, 'no' suddenly decided to get off the fence and play them when specs which offered an alternative to the clunkiness were introduced?

It'd be one thing if the kits didn't suck. But on average they do now. All that swapping, and alleged versatility speaks more of a dev team that took all the most annoying and unwieldy bits of other classes and bodged them together. That some people are still able to make it work is exceptional and to be applauded. That said, requiring that one have a top notch rig, lightning fast ISP, and the reflexes of a hamster on crack to play a seven year old game and barely keep their head above water against much easier to play alternatives seems just a bit much to me.

I put these two together because the response is the same: mis-attribution. If kits worked fine in the past and don't now, that isn't the fault of kits. It's the fault of power creep. The kits + toolbelt mechanic remains sound, high skill floor and all. Kits themselves can be improved, made more powerful, and made more versatile, but there is nothing wrong with the mechanic itself.

[MrPhantasia.5924]

@Chaith.8256 said:

@coro.3176 said:I don't agree that these are trade-offs in any meaningful sense.

My literal words were: I can see the argument for not enough trade off: Obviously I KNOW that it's a favorable trade-off, look at how much better Holosmith is than core. It has trade-offs, facts, your opinion saying they're not meaningful, I somewhat agree, somewhat disagree as well because I've seen Holosmiths in gold/unranked Overheat 5 times in a match.

Holosmith is shackled with a unfair double trade off. Not only does it lose it's precious elite toolbelt skill, gets double nerfed with abusively restrictive heat mechanic. Holosmith should only sacrifice it's F5. That's trade off enough.

[Chaith.8256]

@MrPhantasia.5924 said:Holosmith is shackled with a unfair double trade off. Not only does it lose it's precious elite toolbelt skill, gets double nerfed with abusively restrictive heat mechanic. Holosmith should only sacrifice it's F5. That's trade off enough.

I know this is the point of view for some people who've picked up Holosmith in PvP. The heat mechanic is a rather large barrier to entry, punishing beginners enough to where Holosmith becomes much worse than if you just ran core. The good news is that it's disproportionally abusive to new players, and you can curb 95% of that punish with practice. So, my bet is your perspective on Holo will change once you practice more with the heat mechanic.

[coro.3176]

@Chaith.8256 said:

@"MrPhantasia.5924" said:Holosmith is shackled with a unfair double trade off. Not only does it lose it's precious elite toolbelt skill, gets double nerfed with abusively restrictive heat mechanic. Holosmith should only sacrifice it's F5. That's trade off enough.

I know this is the point of view for some people who've picked up Holosmith in PvP. The heat mechanic is a rather large barrier to entry, punishing beginners enough to where Holosmith becomes much worse than if you just ran core. The good news is that it's disproportionally abusive to new players, and you can curb 95% of that punish with practice. So, my bet is your perspective on Holo will change once you practice more with the heat mechanic.

I'm pretty sure that was sarcasm. Like .. pretty sure.

"abusive restrictive heat mechanic". "precious elite toolbelt skill".

I chuckled.

[Chaith.8256]

@"coro.3176" said:I'm pretty sure that was sarcasm. Like .. pretty sure.

"abusive restrictive heat mechanic". "precious elite toolbelt skill".

I chuckled.

No I don't think so. Not saying that calling the heat mechanic abusively restrictive is a well balanced opinion, that kind of speaks only from a beginner Holosmith's reality, but still valid based on their perspective with it.

I think Orbital Strike is a trash ability, but Med-Pack Drop is quite a game changer, a full AoE condi clear and a health reset.

Now, Toss Elixir X can devastate multiple people when you combo it with your teammate's key abilities. This is quite amazing what a non-Holo can do with this:

https://clips.twitch.tv/PowerfulTameLemurCoolStoryBob

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

The new shredder gyro is actually pretty strong. The damage isn't as high as laser disk, but being on a 20 second cooldown means that it's damage per recharge time is right between an unboosted and boosted laser disk.

[Obtena.7952]

@Iozeph.5617 said:Then what do you want to compare it to? The people here making comparisons are doing so for the purpose of competitive modes. It's relevant there, particularly in PvP where there's limited slots on a team. It's also relevant as was mentioned when it comes to group utility.

Nothing ... What even makes someone THINK comparisons across classes is a meaningful way to determine what classes do in the first place? That doesn't make sense. I know you would LIKE for comparisons to be relevant, because it makes it easy to cherry pick and complain when you don't have something, but it doesn't appear at all to be relevant to Anet's process of class changes.

[Iozeph.5617]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I put these two together because the response is the same: mis-attribution. If kits worked fine in the past and don't now, that isn't the fault of kits. It's the fault of power creep. The kits + toolbelt mechanic remains sound, high skill floor and all. Kits themselves can be improved, made more powerful, and made more versatile, but there is nothing wrong with the mechanic itself.

It's not mis-attribution to suggest that our mechanics are antiquated.

Who said kits worked 'fine'? They held even but still with a hell of a lot more work involved than other professions to do it(with elementalists being the possible exception). What are you going to do to make them work now? When they're up against bursts from professions that don't need to muck about with that sort of swapping and which -even with the most adept of kit swappers- they'll have no hope of matching in any given unit of time?

Having to do so much swapping was never a good idea because it was doomed from the outset to be superseded by just this sort of thing. But if we're stuck with rubbish kits it and they're going to continue being held over our heads as an excuse to not get weapon swap, more base weapons, better damage, better traits, or better anything then what's the point?

There's a lot more mobility now, a lot more condition cleanse, a lot more health, sustain, and outright invulnerability to contend with and here we are, stuck with something which back in the day was workable -even if it was essentially the death of a thousand paper cuts- because those things weren't so prevalent. Except now they are, now swapping out to one kit to drop one bit of damage here or to inflict one condition there and then swap to another will in that amount of time see it either ignore or cleansed while at the same time we''re getting out faces melted off.

As has been mentioned Holo goes to a kit with PF which is less a kit than it is a solid new weapon that's monster with any given button, and when that's expired it fluidly swaps back to weapon use which isn't so rubbish in the damage dept that it doesn't tide you over well before you're back in forge ripping people a new one all over again. It's seamlessly done and with little time lost.

You have two solutions here-

1. Either nerf everyone not playing a core engineer down to the point where swapping kits barely holds even again -which is stupid and isn't going to happen because whatever population is left to competitive modes will quit playing.

2. Find a way to give core access to other weapons and better damage output without the need to rely on the kit swapping gimmick. That could be improvements to turrets, it could be new damage-oriented gadgets, better traits in firearms/explosives that have more of an impact on base weapons etc(say making pistol auto count as an explosion).

But there's no way to just buff kits with the kind of damage needed to hold even today because if we retain access to all kits then the ability to swap from one over powered ability on one kit then to another, and another riding the cooldowns will make them an overpowered advantage in a way they never were before. Making a delay in the vein of attunement swapping on elementalist will make them an even larger annoyance and probably just subject us to vomit-inducing future traits with no other functionality beyond lowering that delay by a fraction.

Wags from other classes who love to drop in here and troll will just say,'Derr... Git gud. If u want 2 do damage play Holo, if u want 2 tank play Scrapper.'

What's the unspoken subtext here? That if you want to suck, be mediocre at your best, and still be curbstomped routinely play core Engineer?

I've played a lot of games, seen a lot of mmos where certain zones and content is deprecated and never revisited. This is the first game I've played where a majority of a whole profession is left in the dust and considered little more than a leveling spec.

[Iozeph.5617]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Iozeph.5617 said:Then what do you want to compare it to? The people here making comparisons are doing so for the purpose of competitive modes. It's relevant there, particularly in PvP where there's limited slots on a team. It's also relevant as was mentioned when it comes to group utility.

Nothing ... What even makes someone THINK comparisons across classes is a meaningful way to determine what classes do in the first place? That doesn't make sense.

Perhaps not in your world. But in everybody else's world -where the operative term in Competitive Mode is 'Competitive' that's how you do it. Because you have to directly compare and measure the capabilities of one skill set against another to determine balance. Otherwise it just becomes acceptable to have one profession dominate all others for a myriad reasons - whether that's canon, aesthetics, or because the dev simply wants them to be considered 'special and unique' and enforces this even when it makes players quit in frustration and leave either the mode or the game altogether.

Why? Because at the heart of the matter nobody wants to be losing all-day, everyday for such arbitrary reasoning. They also don't want to have annoying prats coming into their class subforums, telling them to throw away the time they've invested on one profession in order to 'join them and then beat them with it' on another profession which, aside from using it to cheese their way to said victories, they have no interest in playing whatsoever.

And it's not just about damage. The end result of high damage isn't quite as important as how professions reach it. Mechanically if one is a clear advantage over others, whether that's less frames required to execute an ability for x amount of damage over time, or whether it's having a higher percentage of evade frames so that one profession is able to dump damage on others while escaping any chance of retaliation during those executions, or whether its having one or several a high damage abilities with little to no audible or visual tells before their executions - those things are broken.

Of course in PvE that doesn't matter because it's team fight against dumb AI. In player v player, profession v profession, it's potentially an unfair advantage.

But don't look at me. I'm not the one who wanted to gain increased market share by catering to the Realm versus Realm and the Arena PvP crowd. ANet did that. They wanted more players in GW2 and the money from potential gem sales that came with them.

There's a certain amount of responsibility that comes with that money. At the the most basic is an internal test server something most of their major competitors have -and which Anet still refusea to operate. If a game studio is stupid or lazy it isn't down to the player base to test their content during prime time play -especially competitive play. It also isn't their job to engage in the sort of masochism required to adapt and overcome the stupidity and laziness of an unfair playing field. It's a game after all, it shouldn't be a job for the player, full stop.

If the studio wants to continue having a regular inflow of money for their product then the burden falls to them to keep it balanced, entertaining, and ultimately engrossing enough to keep those players from straying to greener pastures. If Anet decides to ignore those problems, in spite of an ever-expanding range of competitive gaming in the market place, then it's at their own peril.

But apart from all of this- to be back on topic- I hope this patch is the beginning of Anet -post layoffs- waking up and actually caring again about balance. I hope this is the first to come of many, more frequent balance passes, because if this latest patch is it for a long while then it's just not good enough.

[Zex Anthon.8673]

@Iozeph.5617 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I put these two together because the response is the same: mis-attribution. If kits worked fine in the past and don't now, that isn't the fault of kits. It's the fault of power creep. The kits + toolbelt mechanic remains sound, high skill floor and all. Kits themselves can be improved, made more powerful, and made more versatile, but there is nothing wrong with the mechanic itself.

It's not mis-attribution to suggest that our mechanics are antiquated.

Who said kits worked 'fine'? They held even but still with a hell of a lot more work involved than other professions to do it(with elementalists being the possible exception). What are you going to do to make them work now? When they're up against bursts from professions that don't need to muck about with that sort of swapping and which -even with the most adept of kit swappers- they'll have no hope of matching in any given unit of time?

Elementalists don't even have to deal with the the trade offs that core engi does when deciding to take extra weapon skills in place of a utility skill. They get 4 sets for free as part of their profession mechanic. Additionally, being designed as a profession mechanic from the start, attunements have meaningful traits and utility synergies. While with kits we are left with traits like short fuse and grenadier.

@Iozeph.5617 said:You have two solutions here-

1. Either nerf everyone not playing a core engineer down to the point where swapping kits barely holds even again -which is stupid and isn't going to happen because whatever population is left to competitive modes will quit playing.

2. Find a way to give core access to other weapons and better damage output without the need to rely on the kit swapping gimmick. That could be improvements to turrets, it could be new damage-oriented gadgets, better traits in firearms/explosives that have more of an impact on base weapons etc(say making pistol auto count as an explosion).

There is a third option. Rework kits into a proper profession mechanic with meaningful traits. That way you can use kits without giving up a critical utility slot. Limit the number of kits to two so that the overall power does not get spread too thin making each kit unique and powerful on their own, but with the option to add powerful synergies between two kits.

People have been complaining that toolbelt F5 is not a meaningful enough trade off for photon forge. That says more about how shitty toolbelts are than it does about how overpowered PF is.

[Iozeph.5617]

How do we do that though? I'm not saying it's impossible, but how? How do we make flamethrower or elixir gun do more than tickle enemies? How do we make Bomb kit not a death sentence? How do we make grenades less unwieldy? Of late, thanks to this recent patch, the word of the moment has become 'tradeoffs.' The problem with kits, as opposed to the profession(including elites) overall, is that each one is built with a fatal flaw or a tradeoff that keeps it from being good enough to rely on for every situation - or any situation for that matter now unless it's PvE.

The history is a lot of talk out of both sides of Anet's mouth. We have no weapon swap because kits allegedly take the place of alternate weapon sets. Our base weapons are weaker on average because we have access to kits... Oh and turrets we have turrets to help increase our overall damage except they're weak against and susceptible to everything rubbish now.

All those excuses yet they've never had any intention of allowing kits to be strong enough to be considered competitive, main weapons either -or what some derisively call 'humping' or 'camping' a kit. A lot of the problem too is that we're in a bad place by design. Near every single kit and core weapon we have is this bastard, hybrid mix of power and conditions that never seems to hit the mark for either side. The metas tend to fall heavily into one camp or another while we're saddled with stupid traits such as on-crit bleeds, or burning that either don't do much of anything if you're not partially built for conditions(or even then), or only come up every ten seconds or so if they do any significant amount of damage without it. So we get might on bleed application - awesome for flamethrowers one would figure -but just in time for scourges and the boon stripping/corrupting meta to come in. And this is the sort of design we've been saddled with from day one.

Outside of Holosmith what do we have that's a good, solid all the time power option? Bombs, grenades, mortar? Each of which have their own quirks or hazards which make them annoying to use at the best of times and require our enemies to be dumb enough to stand in the circle. Our best bet for conditions? Some of that in addition to endless kit and pistol swapping which was and still is clunky with what condis applied taking too long to do so and being too easily cleansed.

All of it has the stink of our being initially designed to do a little of everything competently but none of it well and that's where we are -sort of- because with every successive expansion/patch/whatever we've had to continuously stretch, massage, and outright abuse what the definition of 'competently' should be.

I don't pretend to have the answers. I just know it feels to me and that it's annoying as hell trying to make it all work against other, easier played professions. Short of a full-on profession overhaul/rebuild I don't see what's going to change that.

[Obtena.7952]

@Iozeph.5617 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Iozeph.5617 said:Then what do you want to compare it to? The people here making comparisons are doing so for the purpose of competitive modes. It's relevant there, particularly in PvP where there's limited slots on a team. It's also relevant as was mentioned when it comes to group utility.

Nothing ... What even makes someone THINK comparisons across classes is a meaningful way to determine what classes do in the first place? That doesn't make sense.

Perhaps not in your world.

Apparently not in Anet's either. I mean ... it's irrelevant who's doing that or who's world you want to live in ... in GW2, you are in Anet's world. If Anet was doing it that way, we would have balance if what you say is true. So clearly ... you are wrong to make comparisons like that and think they are meaningful.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@Iozeph.5617 said:

It's not mis-attribution to suggest that our mechanics are antiquated.

More words doesn't necessarily mean better.. There's a lot of words here, but they don't convey the point better. In this case, the word "antiquated" is utterly meaningless.

@Iozeph.5617 said:Who said kits worked 'fine'? They held even but still with a hell of a lot more work involved than other professions to do it(with elementalists being the possible exception). What are you going to do to make them work now? When they're up against bursts from professions that don't need to muck about with that sort of swapping and which -even with the most adept of kit swappers- they'll have no hope of matching in any given unit of time?

I'm saying kits worked fine. Again, I must reiterate that for a long time, the meta builds on engineers were x3 kits, or x2 kits and one other utility. The kits were necessary that Anet added stunbreak on Elixir Gun just to make Engineers more whole. For you see, requiring a lot of technical work (two button presses for a skill) doesn't mean much in the top tiers, where players can easily manage all of the skills. You are wrong in saying that engineers can't match the time, because they've done so in the past.

Improving kits is easy: more damage, shorter cooldowns, larger range, faster casting time, merging skills to create spots for new skills, adding additional abilities onto skills that already exist, etc. If you want to be really radical, make Streamlined Kits baseline. It's a silly question, really. It would be better to ask how not to improve kits.

@Iozeph.5617 said:Having to do so much swapping was never a good idea because it was doomed from the outset to be superseded by just this sort of thing.

It really wasn't. The move to elite specializations and new weapons was a drastic change in direction for Anet. Besides, if your complaint is power creep, then the solution is to power up kits. They aren't doomed to fail no matter what you do.

@Iozeph.5617 said:But if we're stuck with rubbish kits it and they're going to continue being held over our heads as an excuse to not get weapon swap, more base weapons, better damage, better traits, or better anything then what's the point?

I'm sorry, but who is the developer who said this? Because it is flat out wrong. We HAVE more base weapons. We HAVE gotten better damage. We HAVE gotten better traits. We HAVE gotten a weapon swap of sorts with the Holosmith. There is no magical barrier that prevents the engineer from receiving general improvements, as evidenced by the fact that we receive general improvements all the time.

@Iozeph.5617 said:There's a lot more mobility now, a lot more condition cleanse, a lot more health, sustain, and outright invulnerability to contend with and here we are, stuck with something which back in the day was workable -even if it was essentially the death of a thousand paper cuts- because those things weren't so prevalent. Except now they are, now swapping out to one kit to drop one bit of damage here or to inflict one condition there and then swap to another will in that amount of time see it either ignore or cleansed while at the same time we''re getting out faces melted off.

These things ebb and flow. We shift in and out of condi meta, power meta, bunker meta, burst meta, etc. A lot of your complaints now are recent, and they can go away at any time. You know, there are many threads on the PVP and Profession forum complaining about how strong Holosmiths and Scrappesr are. Engineers as a whole haven't been power crept; we're the ones creeping.

If anything, the logical complaint would be the redundancy of kit abilities in light of the new specializations. This was by design, though. Bomb kit was nerfed specifically because it did too much damage and made all of the new weapons/skills useless.

@Iozeph.5617 said:As has been mentioned Holo goes to a kit with PF which is less a kit than it is a solid new weapon that's monster with any given button, and when that's expired it fluidly swaps back to weapon use which isn't so rubbish in the damage dept that it doesn't tide you over well before you're back in forge ripping people a new one all over again. It's seamlessly done and with little time lost.

You have two solutions here-

1. Either nerf everyone not playing a core engineer down to the point where swapping kits barely holds even again -which is stupid and isn't going to happen because whatever population is left to competitive modes will quit playing.

2. Find a way to give core access to other weapons and better damage output without the need to rely on the kit swapping gimmick. That could be improvements to turrets, it could be new damage-oriented gadgets, better traits in firearms/explosives that have more of an impact on base weapons etc(say making pistol auto count as an explosion).

But there's no way to just buff kits with the kind of damage needed to hold even today because if we retain access to all kits then the ability to swap from one over powered ability on one kit then to another, and another riding the cooldowns will make them an overpowered advantage in a way they never were before. Making a delay in the vein of attunement swapping on elementalist will make them an even larger annoyance and probably just subject us to vomit-inducing future traits with no other functionality beyond lowering that delay by a fraction.

Then don't make it over powered? This is a contradiction to everything you've said before. If having strong kits would make them overpowered, then clearly the kit mechanic isn't "rubbish." You're pulling "problems" from thin air. See, if you put the kits on the level of the new weapon skills that the e-specs give, this won't make the e-specs overpowered. It would just make their weapons partially redundant. That isn't bad, though. Engineers would be afforded more options regarding the weapons or kits that they run. Then, you can exchange different weapons for using different kits, depending on the individual quirks of the build and the fight that you're going in to. Personally I didn't like that they nerfed Bomb Kit. I would've rathere buffed the auto attacks of Hammer, Sword, and the Tool Kit.

@Iozeph.5617 said:Wags from other classes who love to drop in here and troll will just say,'Derr... Git gud. If u want 2 do damage play Holo, if u want 2 tank play Scrapper.'

What's the unspoken subtext here? That if you want to suck, be mediocre at your best, and still be curbstomped routinely play core Engineer?

I legitimately have no idea what you're saying here.

@Iozeph.5617 said:I've played a lot of games, seen a lot of mmos where certain zones and content is deprecated and never revisited. This is the first game I've played where a majority of a whole profession is left in the dust and considered little more than a leveling spec.

This is flat out wrong. Most of the skills the engineer has are either used, or can be used easily in more niche situations or without much loss. Hell, there's even a core build on Snowcrows for raids.

I'm having a hard time figuring out what your deal is. You complain non-stop about having to swap kits and rely on versatility for core builds, but refuse to accept buffs for kits. Why are you here? If you have how the engineer plays, then why do you insist on playing it? There's plenty of low-floor classes for you to pick up. On the one hand you complain about kit reliance and swapping, and yet are so adamant against playing Scrapper and Holosmith, which don't heavily rely on kit swapping. You were given exactly what you want, but still complain about it. Everything you say is either flat out wrong or a contradiction.