Alcatraznc.3869

It depends on your type of content. If you are doing things in open world, I still think you can get away with running condi shortbow and axe Ranger. It's not really hard and you can just spam bleeding until your target dies. Mechanist is also a relatively good option. Mirage S/S as well. For group content...I guess you can always run DPS Alac Mechanist or Heal Alac Tempest. Both can provide alac and in worst case scenario, for Tempest you can just spam overload for every non water element and keep the water overload for healing.

That is simply wrong considering there IS a range option for the mechanist. If the Mechanist was indeed intended to be played at melee range then they would just give 3 melee option. The fact that the power DPS option comes with the rifle arms means it was intended from the beginning to allow the mech to be played at range. And once again, what you are saying is YOUR own vision of the Mechanist, not Anet vision.

Anything that has vitality and toughness is going to make you tanky. And the rest is about using teleport, leap, invisibility.....

Well congratz because you just describe how facing a Necromancer feels like. Yeah sure it isnt exactly like that but it doesnt exactly matter when you can regen your life force with minimal effort. As for the OP, while I wouldnt exactly mind having a power armor mech, I would like to remind you that the current dev team has literally 0 idea how Engineer work as a class so I would be extremely careful on what I ask. Anet being Anet they will definitely manage to make a reworked Mechanist perform worse than the pre reworked Mechanist

I dont exactly get what you means by "many build" because other profession/spec have about the same amount of effective build. If we count all the build including the sub optimal or non effective one then Engineer isnt much different than other spec on that aspect.

Although there are some truth in here, it is also unfair to say other kits are not kinda underwhelming as well or simply not fitting for an offensive build. -Bomb kit could have been a good option to replace grenade kit but not only bombs have 1 sec delay time before exploding, it doesnt help that the kit is weirdly designed. The auto attack deals high damage but all its other skill are focused toward condition damage with extremely poor power damage. The delay combined with the relatively small AOE makes it garbage against moving target which is pretty much everything WvW/PvP is about. Grenade fix this issue by offering ranges. And I dont want to mention the toolbelt skill that was decent back then forcing your opponent to think twice before engaging because it would deal a lot of damage while also giving a hard CC (despite having like 3 sec delay before exploding). Now it's just a hard CC with 3 sec delay...and I could probably do the same if I use rifle 4. -Toolkit is a purely utility kit with one high burst damage and the rest being utility. The auto attack is trash. The nailbox skill is underwhelming if not trash due to having poor base duration. The prybar or crowbar skill is the high burst skill, nothing to say here. The shield is good although I still dislike the 1 sec nerf it receive a long time ago. The magnet pull is good. In the end, this kit is only really used for 3 skill : shield, prybar and the pull. All 3 are decent but it will compete with the rest of the engineer kit. If your goal is to mitigate damage, then there are better alternative like Elixir S or hell even the rocket boot (I am not counting skill related to spec). If your goal is to pull your opponent then Toolkit is your go to option simply because there are no better skill to do that nor weapon skill (Mesmer can pull up to 5 person with its focus 4 and with the right trait it can also block projectile). Still a very heavy investement for something situational. -FT kit is a mixed bag. On one hand it has a pretty strong toolbelt skill for condi spec, on the other the kit is a bit in a similar state as bomb kit. The auto attack under quickness can deal decent raw damage with an extra burn at the end but the rest of the kit is focused toward condition with ok burn duration/stack and some CC. Skill 2 is good to apply burn but that's about it. Skill 3 will never be used outside of PvE, skill 4 is an ok pushback and skill 5 is garbage. -Elixir kit is a support kit so unless you're looking for breakstun or small condi cleanse, you're just going to slot something else in here. Out of all these 4 kit mentioned, 2 are offensive kit competing against grenade kit : FT and bomb. None of these kit offer an option to properly deal with ranged opponent. None of these kit really do well against close range opponent either. Unless your opponent is dumb and fighting the way you want, he's not going to chase you as you drop your bomb or let you stack enough burning that it actually hurts him. There are other profession that can just run away while attacking so on that note, Engineer isnt the only one benefiting from that. Also the high burst damage + stealth isnt something only the Engineer can do. I can do the same with Thief and GS Mesmer and both of them have access to much more efficient gap closer than Engineer. Yeah sure I can also throw the burst at range but the dispersion will just reduce the damage. There is a reason why people use the burst grenade at melee range rather than at range otherwise why bother going at close range ? But blaming the grenade burst in this scenario is missing the fact that all of this (getting close + burst) is possible because stealth is a broken mechanic. And yeah sure, Engineer having access to stealth allow him to do these dirty thing but I see no difference between a grenade burst at melee range that one shot someone and a Thief backstab that one shot someone. In the end both player on the receiving end gets one shot and none of them could exactly prevent that. And also you're conveniently missing the fact that grenade is only usable if you spec into the grenadeer trait, otherwise you're just running a worse version of Mortar. And honestly short fuse and glass canon are both pretty solid skill I would definitely pick if I let's say Bomb kit was actually good. And you still didnt gave me a proper answer for what is "well designed".

So in the end you still have to glue yourself to the pet instead of doing what a proper pet class should be doing which is attack on different flank. Might as well just play Holosmith then

You say well designed but what IS well designed exactly ? Surely it doesnt involve: -invisibility that basically has no counterplay except if you saw the person stealth in front of you and conveniently doesnt break when condition hurt your opponent -teleportation that ignore height and let you skip/reach places you shouldnt be able to -an absurd access to stability or sustainable boon I just name these 3 but in the grand vacuum of things that may be overtuned, grenade are actually among the most manageable. They are 900 ranged projectile which is at the reach of pretty much everyone with a one handed ranged weapon. Then again, if Anet suddently decide to do a massive revamp and "fix" things that are may be overtuned, then I wont mind grenade being hit as long as other classes also receive an appropriate fix

You can no longer give quickness to your team in PvP/WvW with a Scrapper, this only works in PvE. Dont ask me why, Anet must have thought this is the best way to balance Scrapper in group. But if you want to apply quickness in PvE, you basically have to use blast or leap finisher into a field, regarldess of what kind of field it is and who dropped it.

For open world PvE, by running celestial you already guarantee a pretty good survivability. With that out of the way, a lot if not all classes have a pretty good survivability, they just have a different approach on how to deal with damage. Holosmith for instance can keep up perma protection with light arena which lets him shrug off light damage and you only have to focus on evading the high damage with some margin of error if you fail. Mirage can just spam ambush skill on top of having clones to mess around with the enemy attack. Necromancer have basically 2-4 health bar they can play with if you manage your life force properly.

Not really no. They claim to have improved the Mech responsiveness but when asked to perform a series of action in a successive order especially against a moving target, you can clearly see the struggle of the mech and in general, the struggle of pet AI. I'm just going to repeat myself but right now, if your goal is not to bring Alacrity as an Engineer (or you simply dont care about having a pet) there is literally no reason to play Mechanist over something else. Holosmith brings both power damage and condition damage. One may argue that CDPS Mechanist exist which is true but both CDPS Mechanist and Holosmith have a pretty hard rotation and in the end, you're better off adding a little bit more effort on CDPS Holo for much more consistent damage and also less unecessary micro management through mechanical genius.

But sticking to the Mech like glue because you get punished otherwise IS babysitting the mech.

I like grenade it is fun but it is true that if we put grenade aside, there isnt a whole lot of viable thing the engineer has going for. People love to complain about grenade but none of them came up with something that can actually compete with grenade. Some people came up with some grenadeless build that works for them which is good but when you look at the build, it requires way too much effort just to put out the same amount of damage you could do with grenade. It doesnt help either that Anet and the community has a tendency to find reasons to nerf Engineer. Just look at the Tool rework Anet did, for a moment it brought back the old static discharge + rifle turret build in PvP and despite not even being a meta build, a lot of people complained it was "too strong"

The UI would be overloaded, especially when you start factoring boons/condi, all kind of consummable,unique buffs ..... Alternatively BDO implemented a smart way to tell you when a skill is ready in the form of not having its CD displayed on your screen. If you see the CD of a skill on your screen it means well it is on CD. But if your screen is clean, it means no skill are on CD. And this is a QoL Anet could implement should they not overload the UI.

You are implying that there is a problem and the leash is the solution to the said problem, but in reality the leash isnt a solution. It is a penalty imposed on you for not babysitting your mech. In other word the leash IS the problem not a solution. That is just wrong. The mech had high coefficient on all its skill and inherited a certain % of the engineer stats which lead to high damage for a pet. Yes I know it is shocking for a pet spec to have a pet that deal competitive damage. Whether the coefficient were too high or not is another debate however the solution was not to introduce a broken mechanic that punishes you for not sticking to your pet like glue. Reducing the coefficient was a decent enough solution. The leash serve no purpose other than penalizing you for not following your pet. And in true Anet fashion we got both. I'll remind you that the Mech was supposed to be "a friend" you bring in your fight. And what do you do when you fight a 2 vs 1 ? You dont glue to each other and attack on a single direction otherwise what is the point of shooting yourself in the foot with a Mechanist when you could do the same but better with a Holosmith ? You're supposed to spread out, flank, force the opponent to focus on one side. In PvE this aspect doesnt matter since in 95% of group content you are expected to stack with your team and the 5% remaining is meaningless. But pet AI being pet AI, it loves to move an extra step forward or backward just to mess with your positioning. For OW it isnt worth talking considering all spec can solo clear champions or legendary, some are just faster than the other sure but in the end everyone reaches the same end. For PvP and WvW all the mechanist change pretty much killed the spec. Nerfing the mech coefficient was already bad enough now we have to deal with the leash. I was one of the first here to predict that Mechanist for PvP/WvW would be trash and Anet proved me wrong only during the few weeks after EOD releases. Afterward they straight up killed the mech in WvW while slowly butchering mechanist in PvP in every single area it could perform decently. Let me correct you here, they didnt tried, they DID nerf rifle. And it DID impact all other builds while also killing the weapon for PvP and WvW content. Depends of the context. In the context of OW yes it is not noticeable considering mobs are so weak even with a penalty it can still be killed. In the context of PvE group content you stack with your group anyway so yeah it is not noticeable. In PvP/WvW, that difference is very much noticeable, especially when the coefficient are low to begin with. No this is what you want to believe. Anet themselve promoted the Mechanist as a customisable pet that could fit several role. They never promoted it as a spec that forces you to glue to your pet and play at melee.

Tradeoff ? Vindicator used to have 1 dodge and now it has 2 dodge. Daredevil used to have a F1 with shorter range now it is back to the normal Thief F1. Chronomancer used to trade the distortion for continuum split and now it has both. Berserker used to trade its normal F1 attack for a Berserk mode now it has both. Druid pet used to have a penalty on its stats and now it has none. Soulbeast could not switch pet in combat and now it can. Do you want me to keep going ? Mechanist and Engineer as a whole is among those class that still have to deal with a trade off. Where is our elite toolbelt skill for all our spec ? Where are all the toolbelt skill when we use Mechanist ? How come none of our spec has receive those trade off removal changes ? Fun is subjective and being "fun" and "low effort" is not a reason to give it awfull and garbage punishing mechanic.

Long story short, Anet reworked the rifle and it went from : -super strong-->strong-->original state in PVE -good-->ok-->worse than its pre rework state for PvP and WvW In PvE, the rifle now isnt much better nor worse than its pre rework state. It used to be strong enough to actually be used as a weapon but now you're back to just running kit or elite spec weapon. Rifle is just a stat stick that you sometime use in between 2 skill. In PvP/WvW the rifle is dead. The damage of the auto attack is even worse than its pre reworked version and the rest of the kit didnt changed. Do not expect Anet to change the rifle they're not going to do it because the community wasnt able to say anything other than "Nerf rifle and mechanist" for several months.

Regardless of the game, regardless of how good all weapon can be, there will always be a meta. There will always be that 1 setup that perform slightly better than the other. I dont exactly understand what point you're trying to make. Right now we have a meta, before we had a meta possibly different and after the expansion we will most likely have a new meta. But having a meta doesnt means that non meta setup or weapon are bad. Yeah sure it isnt the top tier DPS support or whatever but it doesnt has to be, if it is good enough to fill the job, if it isnt annoying and people enjoy playing it then no one will complain (except that minority that plays meta build or nothing).

Weaver hammer was super fun. Daredevil rifle for WvW. Shift the survivability from invisibility to mobility and you get something that pokes you from range and is almost impossible to catch up Mirage dagger has some potential but I'm too lazy to invest time to min max a build around that.

That is not how it works otherwise we wouldnt be here testing weapons on other spec

-The sword is underwhelming when not used as a Holosmith. -The mace changes made it whatever now. I was seeing some potential as a support weapon for Scrapper but as it is right now, it is a minuscule improvement. A very very small one. Overall I dont have much things to say about Engineer's weapon. None of them stands out outside of their spec and the sword is straight up bad. I can exactly say I wasnt expecting it but....It feels like Engineer is the class that ends up beneficing the least from that change. It is pretty ironic considering we're talking about core engineer technically getting like 3 additionals weapon (which is double the amount of weapon engineer can use without counting underwater weapon). I dont feel the same excitement as seeing a hammer Weaver or a rifle Daredevil or even a dagger Mirage. It ends up feeling bland

Right but I still wanted to say it anyway for the potential reader who would believe that

It isnt exactly hard to have personnal perma alacrity with Mechanist even with low boon duration. I used to run rune of the sanctuary and never had any issue with personnal alacrity. Key word here is personnal. If you tell me you can give perma alacrity to your group with 20% duration using a P/P condi build then I'll ask for a proof because it smells bs

For a spec that forces you to give up an entire branch just to your buff your mech, remove about 20-30 skills and punishes you for not sticking to him like glue, the mech is way way far from being busted.

Why is it there ? Because GW2 community cried that Mechanist is the root of all the issue that exist in this game. Because some people complained that you could press 1 key and then do all the content (I am still waiting for a video of someone doing exactly that, pressing 1 key and then clearing a fractal / raid / strike mission but for some reason all the player claiming that still didnt bother to make one). The whole concept of Mechanist was supposed to be a pet that helps you in your fight, a ""friend"" you bring along. But Anet being Anet they had to turn the spec into a babysitting simulation where everything Mechanist does, other class can do the same but with less micromanagement. The only thing Mechanist do better than other right now is in the alac generation, but even that, GW2 players fails to realise that it isnt Mechanist that is being OP or too strong, it is other spec are either broken, too weak or poorly designed. And instead of asking Anet to fix their spec, they ask for Mechanist to be gutted at their level. In the end no one is happy: engineer will be mad at Anet for gutting the spec and the rest non engineer players will be mad at Anet for not attempting to fix the whole spam skill on CD issue. The worst part is that Mechanist has received so many nerf that the leash now is not even needed and serve only as a punishment for not having your baby close to you. Mechanist in PvE ? You can play Holosmith and do Mechanist job but better.. Mechanist in WvW ? Have fun being useless the moment your mech steps into an AOE. Mechanist in PvP ? You're just giving your team a harder time to win while giving the other team an opponent that will do nothing. This spec only serve for 2 things : Alacrity and the fantasy of having a high tech robot following you around. That's it.