Jerus.4350

I actually like Engi and the kits the way they are. All the suggestions to rework the class from the ground up lately are a bit tiresome. I’d love to see some things tweaked to give even more options but can we stop with trying to change Engi fundamentally?

Not sure that’s the best example when Rev builds still largely camp one weapon set with a staff on the second just for skill 5.

Ahh, that makes sense. Always felt it was a bit of a toss up before, lose stats going Sanctuary, or lose the GM bonus you prefer over the “support” option, had similar results either way, but having some quickness was nice. Just swapping the “F2” trait to support kills the damage the mech does itself either way. (I hate mech trait design)

Alac generation in PVE doesn’t need mace2 or barrier signet. Just needs around 500 concentration for the mech to inherit then mech barrier pulses + F2 and F3 will cover. Mace2 and barrier signet are actually pretty meh due to the 1s ICD of the barrier -> alac trait combined with the mechs barrier pulses every 3s. You need to land the mace2 in that 2s window or you get nothing. For barrier signet you’re sure to lose 2 ticks of alac as well for that reason. Mech alac is funky as heck but doesn’t need mace/barrier signet.

Agree that power is more universally viable, but condi holo isn’t bad, just lots of pressing utility skill-2 over and over. And yeah, cMech is simple and good. If I had a set of ascended and was interested in condi I’d spec that viper and buy a cheap zerker exotic set on the side. Unless fractals were a focus.

That’s because going full into power or condi results in better damage than hybrid. As much as I love the idea, the way Engi traits conflict means we just can’t empower everything as much if we try to go 50/50.

So, Engi Shortbow (PVE Perspective). Overall I feel like it's just not hitting the mark. It needs a little something more and some flexibility/practicality in use. Mechanics for Shortbow: You drop Canisters that upon detonation creates an effect around them and leaves a detonation field. The detonation field (and Combo Fields) are a 180 radius. The effect is a 240 radius (slightly larger than the field you see). If you detonate a canister then any other canister who's 180 radius touches the detonation field will detonate itself. From that chain reaction you will gain additional effects based upon the detonation field that caused the chain reaction. If you toss another canister into a currently running detonation field the canister will automatically detonate gaining the chain reaction benefits of the detonation field that caused the chain reaction. This mechanic has the potential to be neat, but right now there is no flexibility. If the effect radius was say 600' then we could have some room to play. We could load the Might (Skill4) canister to the right, drop the blast/barrier (skill2) canister on top of it, then lob the heal (skill3) canister to the left and then detonate Skill4 for might stacking while leaving the heal in reserve for when it's needed. Once we get that spike of damage (think VG Greens) we can detonate the skill3 for heals and if enough time has passed add a skill2 to it for even more healing and additional barrier on top. But, right now with only 240' radius on the effects, there's none of that play. Instead we just drop canisters onto the stack of players and if you've been using your skills they all start auto detonating and you can't really choose what bonus effects you get. So, increased effect radius would actually give the ability to intelligently plan out and lay out your canisters so they have the impact you want. Then, SB overall is giving us some solid barrier, decent heals, and some very quick might stacking. This has to be weighed against what Mace/Shield offers with Regen/Vigor, solid CC, Protection, and a block and reflect. In the end we're trading better boon coverage and CC for some barrier and faster might stacking. Note, that's not might stacks, but just faster initial stacking because both Mech and Scrapper can pretty easily cap might without SB. I think SB needs a little something to find a niche in the Engineer toolkit. Fury would help bolster hScrapper which is currently the better fit for SB already thanks to the new Protection trait. Protection would actually make SB viable for Mech which if it loses Shield has to invest in traited Thumper Turret and that's not great. I think SB Skill5 is a good pick to get a little extra something in PVE, Slow just isn't all that great in PVE thanks to Defiance on any enemy that's an actual threat. Some regen/Vigor wouldn't hurt either, it doesn't need to be a ton, but just a little bit to help mitigate the loss. SB just needs a little something to become complete in that regard. I think SB could be interesting, but the details just don't work right now.

Well, it looks weird, and that’s what I was hoping for. I’m excited to see how it actually plays, if the various detonate options are interesting it could be a lot of fun.

I’m ok with condi, but I really don’t want it to overshadow pistols. We’re one of the few classes that dual pistols is actually good on and I love it. my guess is that they just copy some thief/ranger/rev skills and call it a day. Some combo field, a blast, and maybe a backwards leap. I hope that they get weird with it and make it fun though. Mesmer rifle gives me some hope there.

Only if we can go full hillbilly with a tub and broomstick skin.

I’m curious, though I do wonder if you just weren’t targeting the right spots. Mortar on walls is a bit funky, basically to hit things on top you want the target area on top. Finding and angle that allows this can be tricky. Angling along the wall and shooting at an angle is usually best. I’ll usually have to fish around for my angle to get the pesky siege. and I usually play asura.

Far from useless, it’s crazy good when stealth skipping, that just doesn’t come up that often in newer content.

We’ll see, it’s a funky one. Seems to affect “new” engis starting around summer last year. It can turn off for some reason (had 2 Engis stop working) but no clue what causes it to start or stop exactly.

You can free up function gyro easily. On heal it’s already not needed with the default build. PqScrapper just take blast over shredder. Cqscrapper it would need full ritualist but with p5 getting a blast, we’ll be rocking. Not liking the combo mechanic I can get, but I just don’t like the “I need to use function gyro” idea that floats around.

When it comes to Turrets, I'd love if they used the Mechanist weapon skill 3 style of effect (Rocket Punch). Tie each turret to a weapon skill number, so for example Rifle Turret's shot will only trigger when you use weapon skill 2. Thumper turret maybe triggers on the 5 skill to make it a longer reuse time. No more passive effects, just what you cause them to do.

It also gives ~25 stacks of group might where the hammer build is ~8. It’s more intimidating from the kits than actually hard, just gotta practice a little bit.

For PVE I think it’s fine. Still plenty of superspeed and barrier with power builds. It’s a simpler pDPS compared to Holo or Core at a minimal damage loss that I think is well worth the QoL gains. (Holo has forge in addition to the standard rotation, and core has dodges and positioning requirements) For PVP/WvW though, yeah feels like it’s been hit in every direction and just a shadow of what it is in PVE and was before. Not terrible but feels terrible.

PScrapper should be like 38ish bench while hammer mech is ~36. PMech is just bad 😅

Good post, Scrapper has this weird situation where bringing more survivability can actually lower your survivability because of how impact savant works. But, the barrier only takes you so far, and past that point I feel like Holo/Mech start to pull away as better options.

Yeah, seems like they did a ton of work to end up in basically the same situation if not worse. But, whatever, I can still play my favorite Engi builds minus a few niche rune bonuses (I miss Zephyrite and Sanctuary)

I agree, cholo is hard to maximize and I’d be surprised if there were more than a dozen players that can hit that 42k(myself not included, I’ll probably cap around 40). But it’s still going to be solid and playable, not like it got dumpstered. I think I could argue for it getting a little back but before this patch it was a bit much. For OW solo, give TRV cholo a shot, with energy sigil and/or tools traitline it’s pretty solid. One of my favorite solo builds. I take sword just for the quickness.

SCAM is 3 kits still. You can drop a kit or two for signets but it’s a DPS loss and a group might loss, so it’s not great. Full Condi DPS mech though can be run with 1 kit at close to the same dps as the 2 kit build. 3 kit dps cMech isn’t really a thing because shift signet is better than FT without the toolbelt skill. Druid did get nerfed, it just wasn’t in the initial patch notes (blood moon 8s->5s iirc). I think there are still some overperforming options but this patch can be seen as a good start to squashing the power creep imo.

CMech is still like 40kish. Cholo is now 42kish. CMech dropping ~2k dps, cholo ~4k lost. CAlac Mech was ~34k, now ~32k. CQscrapper was 35k, now probably ~32kish. Before this last summer’s reworks and Soto boon DPS was 30k+ and full dps ~40k. So we’ve more or less scaled back to where things were during EOD era, which personally I support. Cholo wasn’t the only build that had been creeping it’s way up there, it was just the most egregious. (preliminary numbers from what I remember seeing, I might be off a little)

Well, you see, short bow is coming in the next update and it’s ANet company policy to nerf older options to make the new options shine. No one wanted to do it, but their hands were tied. joking aside, DPS was getting wild, this nerfs condi Engi across the board where it was overperforming based on pre-SotO standards. We’ll be fine, they nerfed everything. Power creep was way too much with SotO.

Not at all, you obviously don’t like it. My point was the anecdotal evidence of my experience that the Engi main people I know seem to enjoy the change for the most part is just as valid as using wingman statistics with no context as hard facts. There are obviously plenty of people who don’t like the change. But it is functional and objectively more flexible than the previous iteration. I don’t see any of these suggestions as improvements personally. I like combos and I liked the old version. I prefer this version because of the increased flexibility and improvements to both condi quick and heal scrapper.