Engineer is in a terrible spot in PvP

[bethekey.8314]

Engineer is in a terrible spot in PvP. There are almost too many things to list here. Its current status is brittle (a shift in the current meta or balance will break it altogether) and boring (passive gameplay with no build diversity). As a long-term Engi main who derives fun from build-crafting, this is the least fun I've had in the game in awhile.

 

Please share alternative game suggestions if you agree or want me to stop complaining.

 

To set the stage before EoD, Core was left ravaged by nerfs from long-overperforming Holosmith and decay from power creep. A damage kit with little utility, grenades were nerfed again and again into pebbles. We don't talk about Bomb kit. Elixirs give boons and it took all of 1 Beta for Harbinger players to complain about how 1 dimensional they are. Now they're the better elixir class without a copy-pasted Elite. A fourth of our utility abilities (Turrets) still serve little to no purpose and render their associated traits useless. Compared to minions, elementals, pets etc., Turrets are the most immobile, lowest damage, lowest health, lowest sustain "pet" in the game. Our *two* choices of mainhand weapon are clearly either power or condi, not both, and among the weakest weapons in the game. Of the *two* choices of offhand weapon, only shield sees play as pistol is laughably bad.

 

Holosmith only remains semi-viable because it can run away / kite with passive sustain. If you don't want to grind carpal tunnel smashing about-face and nade 1 behind you then good luck.

 

Scrapper has some of the longest weapon cds in the game, barrier gain was nerfed, and there's still a vitality tradeoff (remember that whole philosophy?). Nothing really stands out as glaringly bad to me; the whole thing is just mediocre.

 

*deep breath*

 

Then came Mechanist. PvE heroes pushing Golemancer rejoiced while those seeking actual challenges issued a collective groan. AI specs are notoriously bad--the loss of agency over your character brings unsatisfying kills and aggravating deaths. Beating AI usually boils down to how well you can bug it out.

 

At first it was comedically fun. Overtuned to hell with infinite alacrity, 2k autos, permanent signets. Who cares that half our utilities are broken / unbalanced around the lack of a toolbelt?

 

Then the nerfs attacked. 30% less toughness and vitality, 20% less total stats, a 1 seco--no 3 second ICD on a 1 second alacrity buff, no defiance bar, non-permanent signets, longer cooldowns. I think Mechanist is the most nerfed EoD spec now. What little diversity was left with Mechanist became pigeon-holed into Alchemy, Inventions bunker. Instead of fixing the Sanctuary Rune interaction specifically, Anet made them mandatory for any consistent alacrity and all other barrier generators useless.

 

I could go on and on. Engineer is now a build and fun wasteland. The design and balance of Mechanist actively discourages variety or viability. Maybe it's time to hang up the ol' wrench and move to the evergreen pastures of Guardian and Necromancer.

 

 

Edited April 28, 2022 by bethekey.8314

[Kuma.1503]

This frustration is precicely what happens when Anet listens to the thousands of nerf threads. 

People who make those threads care little for the actual health or fun of the game and either want their personal build/class to be stronger by comparison or want to have free wins in a matchup that gave them trouble. 

This might sound ungenerous, but after trying to have civil discussions in those threads, most people just deflect with statements such as "Imagine defending your broken build". 

A statement that shows that any attempt to challenge any confirmation bias the person might have gets discounted outright. 

I don't see things changing either. Anet has to make a hard stance to stop listening to these people or more nerfs will drop in the future. 

I've already had 3 good friends and my entire guild quit because of nerf patches. When will people realize that butchering specs you don't like serves no one in the long run?

[Kodama.6453]

Man, am I glad that I quit playing the game.

Honestly, this was bound to happen once we learned that we are getting an AI elite spec. Whenever Anet tries to make something like this work, they have to nerf it into the ground in the end, since people simply don't think it's fun to die to an AI pet.

It's a complete inability to learn from past mistakes.

[Koensol.5860]

100% agreed with everything. I am a similar kind of player as OP. I enjoy theorycrafting on engineer and couldn't have been more dissappointes at the mechanist class. Engineer feels so kittening stale, and I'm willing to bet it has the highest amount of useless abilities of all the classes. 

 

Only way for me to have fun anymore is my trusty core engineer power build with rifle, toolkit and elixir gun, and turning people into moas. But the list of viable builds on this class shrinks by the day.

[mov.1246]

I dont like playing pvp nor wvw anymore, the "fun" playing it is zero. Reasons are nerfs on the wrong side. And pvp became way too fast, frustrating, and unrewarding to play. Best pvp in this game was in vanilla times, since then pvp went downwards.

no 5k+ condition ticks in vanilla

no 10k+ crits in vanilla

no perma cc in vanilla

no perma boons in vanilla

no super mobility in vanilla

I miss that times.

The main problem is not enginner beeing nerfed, the problem is the game is already full of skills that do too much at once.

Just as example, holomod #3 is: high damage, causes vuln, gives you might, gives you barrier (if traited), count as explosion, hits 5 targets at big radius, and hitting twice (effectiveness of beeing blinded is halfed) . This skill do 7 effects at once. And the game is full of such skills, tweaking numbers or durations does not help, it needs a shave in effects it does at once.

[White Kitsunee.4620]

Holosmith as strong as if is baseline had been the problem since it was released.

[ASP.8093]

12 hours ago, mov.1246 said:

no 10k+ crits in vanilla

Uh, what? There were definitely 10k+ crits before they nerfed the damage a few years ago.

[Kozumi.5816]

On 4/27/2022 at 4:31 PM, Kuma.1503 said:

This frustration is precicely what happens when Anet listens to the thousands of nerf threads. 

People who make those threads care little for the actual health or fun of the game and either want their personal build/class to be stronger by comparison or want to have free wins in a matchup that gave them trouble. 

Nerfs are good, power creep is why this games pvp is a mess.

[Kuma.1503]

41 minutes ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Nerfs are good, power creep is why this games pvp is a mess.

Powercreep has become a meaningless buzzword at this point. People use "muh powercreep" to justify objectively bad changes. 

Example relevant to this thread:

Holosmith is objectively just a powercrept engineer. It fixes nearly every problem with the spec in PvP with virtually no downside. Obviously this is a problem, and the logical choice would be to remove the powercrept elements from holosmith to make the elite spec more healthy. 

Anet's decision was to repeatedly nerf core engineer. No one plays it anyway, so no one will notice it we take it out back and bludgen it a few more times with the nerf bat. 

This not only didn't fix the issue with Holosmith being overpowered, it resulted in harsh nerfs to a core spec that was already underperforming. 

And I had people unironically try to justify the core engi nerfs with statements such as "nerfs good. it remove powercreep" and "if it was broken on holo it was probably broken on core too". These same people go on to complain that Holosmith has literally no downsides over core when it overperforms. 

Um Yes? When you keep nerfing core instead of holo you end up with less reason to play core over the elite which removes any downside to picking the elite in the process? Nerfing core engi just makes Holo (and Scrapper) Core Engi+ even moreso than they already are. 

I shouldn't have to say this, but Good nerfs are good. Bad nerfs are bad. 

If we imagine powercreep as a sickness. Medicine (nerfs) might be a good way to fix it.. Misdiagnose the sickness and prescribe the wrong medicine and you might just make things worse. 

Edited April 28, 2022 by Kuma.1503