N A T E.3108

There's literally nothing wrong with nade kit right now... show me the abuse and we'll talk. As stated in many other places throughout this thread, Engi as a whole (with maybe a slight edge to Holo) is not competitive. The only "nerf" to nades that should even be considered (and it better be in the process of buffing Engi overall) is removing the "Snap to Target" feature in Options. That's a kitten option to have in a competitive ground-targeting game anyway. I don't get all these trolls coming out of the woodwork with Engi hate when it literally hasn't been a viable competitive option in ages. It's even gone through several rounds of nerfs since it fell out of the meta. The slight "buffs" more recently haven't been remotely enough to even begin scraping this poor class off the floor. zzz ALIEN

Since I resurrected this thread, the only dissenting voice is arguing that p/p condi scrapper is a highly-competitive, top-performing spvp class. @Fellknight.4820 I think it might be time for you to hang up the keyboard warrior cape... Unless you've been mistaking the stronghold NPCs as other players, your takes have hardly been shy of complete lunacy. ANET, the time has finally come: buff engi. ALIEN

Well, I can't say engi has fared even remotely well in this post-balance meta. Engi is still not competitive. Anet, your "balance" decisions and "buffs" for engi are literally jokes. ALIEN

It's gotten exponentially worse since the spear update. It's probably about 15-20% worse now for engi than it was when I posted this thread. Zzz. ALIEN

If by "decent" you mean underperforming... then sure. If by "pretty good spot" you mean quite terrible... then sure. If by "so many build options" you mean so many bad options... then sure. Actually, now that I think about it... I was completely wrong and you you're completely right. Condi engi, especially core condi, is obviously in a super-duper strong spot with such immense build diversity and effectiveness. Your take has completely changed my mind. I'm sure we've all just overlooked it and now that you've shown us the light, you can share even just one of these super duper good builds with the class and we can all agree on how immensely powerful it is in this meta. You might even start a whole new condi engi meta! :] You hear that @bethekey.8314? We're in for quite the treat. Get ready to be meta-strong soon! ALIEN

Hey now, to be fair, I haven’t played nades almost at all, ever 😂

Amen. I love the core/kit playstyle of engi, but ANET has no idea what to do with it. They are eng-illiterate xD

I don't claim to be that great of a player, but I do have 10y of experience playing engi and the reality of the class in this meta is simple: it requires a great amount of skill to pull off an effective level of gameplay. The meta is saturated with extremely tanky classes that also deal considerable damage with a very low skill ceiling. In experienced hands, engi damage can arguably be on par with much of the meta, but to achieve that you have to spec for full glass (power), lose much of your sustainability, and have an extremely high-level of knowledge/competence on the class to actually execute its complex play style. My scrapper build, for example, is an augmented version of a core play style from pre-HoT, and is full glass with 28-30 skills that are actively in use while in combat. It's currently the only scrapper build, and one of the few engi builds, that I think performs OKAY-ish (but I also have 10y of experience playing it- it's not something someone could easily pick up). Intentional skill combos can easily stretch 6-9 skills to do the damage that a vindi, wb, reaper, untamed, mes, etc can achieve in 2-3. It's very hard to compete 1v1 vs meta classes because they eat damage inherently and deal damage easily. It's virtually impossible vs equally skilled players. Condi variants of engi, like Bethekey plays, are great examples of builds that are only effective because of the experienced veteran engi playing it. Honestly, the only engis I see that are even remotely effective are veterans with weird off-meta and highly complex builds. With such complex damage rotations, minimal mobility, low sustain, no ports (mech doesn't count), limited stunbreaks (often only 1), limited stab access, little to no stealth, and a high dependance on kiting/dodges with access to only a couple long-cd small blocks (during which we do not have the ability to use other skills) there's little question as to why this class is a rarity to spot in the pvp wild. That's not even to mention this meta's over-prevalence now of unblockables that are balanced around classes like guard, virt, ele, and untamed that unfairly impact engi, a class that bases its entire sustain on virtually only dodges and a couple small blocks. Agree with me or don't, but I promise you that you won't hop on engi and find it even remotely powerful in this meta. I still think that holo, which I absolutely hate, probably has the best chances of being meta/viable, but even it is severely lacking right now. Point me to a meta class that engi should beat 1v1 among equally skilled players. You can't. ALIEN

Engi is not competitive with any build. At least not from what I've seen. Holo seems to be the strongest of the engi variants, and even it plays well-below the bar in this meta... God forbid you try to play core, mech, or scrap. "bUt NaDe sCrApPeR!" you say? Well, let me challenge you to play with it vs any equally skilled player on any other meta build and we'll see how strong you think it is afterward. I don't care if you're going to QQ about a single target getting oneshotted once every 75s (almost impossible to do to most meta classes now anyway) AND, for a scrap to even be able to do that, it has to be spec'd full glass, have nearly no defenses/stunbreaks, and waste its entire elite slot (and stealth) for a single player kill. If you have any problem catching and dispatching of that glassy lil' scrap, the blame is on you. It's one of the easiest kills in game. Simple truth: scrap, core, and mech are virtually unplayable from a competitive standpoint, and holo is only slightly above those. Literally, engi is gutted. P.S. If you get rolled by some non-meta engi veteran that knows how to counter your playstyle, that doesn't negate my argument. As I said before, "play with it vs any equally skilled player on any other meta build". ALIEN

Thank you Anet balance team, as always, for your expert "balance" decisions. Through your wise and well thought out changes to Harbinger, you have successfully made it immortal with high condi-output and cc. With changes like these, it's a wonder this game isn't the most popular on the market. ALIEN

Obviously, there are other classes with specs that are underperforming in this meta, but I think it unreasonable that engi does not have access to a single competitive build for this meta among any of its specs. ALIEN

Let's face it. Holo is by far still the best class for engi in PvP, and Holo is underpowered in this meta. Anet has gutted engi as a whole. Us poor non-holo engis are getting crapped on. ALIEN

Meh, I understand the desire for competitive choice when using this skill, but it's a weird one anyway that is really only used by those who want to focus on big damage over a short duration. To that end, I think the addition of Lich could be fun one. ALIEN

If it truly is a WvW-only related change, then they need to split the skill, like they have with so many, and give PvP magnet a shorter cast time/cd to accommodate for the heavy nerf. The phrase "beating a dead horse" hardly begins to describe how bad the situation is for the already underperforming core/scrap/mech with incoming nerfs on the horizon.

Pre-patch, Holo was relatively high damage in the right hands, but it's heavily telegraphed, largely melee-range-dependent, and very squishy. It also wasn't over performing in comparison to any other meta class before the patch. Damage was its one saving-grace, but with the 50% SD nerf, the Flashbang nerf, and the consequential compounding amount of sustain loss, it inevitably will go sit the bench the rest of the engi specs in oblivion. There are just too many other classes that deal heavy damage, have considerable CC capabilities, sustain like bunkers, and require half the skill to pull off effectively. Such is the engi way of life. ALIEN