What Is The Biggest Design Flaw With Engineer?

[SleepyBat.9034]

I think the biggest issue is that Scrapper and Holosmith has no tradeoff compared to Core Engineer other then the F5 skill.

[Kuma.1503]

Looks like we're going back on the whole "Trade-off" thing for all classes, so now that will become the norm for everyone. 

[Noah Salazar.5430]

2 hours ago, SleepyBat.9034 said:

I think the biggest issue is that Scrapper and Holosmith has no tradeoff compared to Core Engineer other then the F5 skill.

Anet stated thay will try remove most "Trade-offs" from all classes

thats why thay removed -vitality from impact savant

 

Edited September 19, 2022 by Noah Salazar.5430

[SleepyBat.9034]

1 minute ago, Noah Salazar.5430 said:

Anet stated thay will remove "Trade-offs" from all classes

 

Yeah but they can't do that for all classes, Core Necromancers trade-off is it loses core shroud.

[Calen.8945]

The flaw with Engineer is the lack of weapons. If you don't use an elite spec you are ranged, no ways around that.

[Noah Salazar.5430]

1 minute ago, Calen.8945 said:

The flaw with Engineer is the lack of weapons. If you don't use an elite spec you are ranged, no ways around that.

thats why thay made rifle good

for mele option you have tool kit, yet thay will buff tool tree

[SleepyBat.9034]

Bombkit is also a thing, even if it is kind of bad at the moment.

[wasss.1208]

In my oppinion, the biggest design flaw is also what makes it interesting. I'm talking about the kits. By making them "opt-in", A-net really cut the tree under themselves. They have no saying on how many we pick up, thus they are hard to balance around. If they balance kits with the idea, that people will run with a single kit, people who slot in more, will be incredibly powerful... if they balance them around the idea, that people will pick up 4, they'll be underwhelming. I wouldn't be surprised, if the next elit spec, or even the next Guild Wars game we get, had Engineer limited to one, or two kits.

Second would be the lack of melee weapons for core. Or just lack of weapons in general. We get pretty overloaded weapons on the elit specs because of this, so we are not forced to pick up as many kits, and we can play around with the new utility types. It isn't bad for the new specs, but pretty "eeh", for core.

Third would be general balance, although that got improved a lot, in the past few months. No more nerfs (except for shield) on core, because of an overperforming elit spec, and we finally see buffs on underused traitlines. Keep up the good work!

[Jerus.4350]

Nice list wasss, that’d be my first two as well.  
 

then for the third I’d just elaborate and point how how locked in we are to explosions/firearms.  Those trait lines are just so bloated for damage that it’s hard to compete.  It’s not surprising that Core is only slightly behind Scrapper and Holo on damage (and soon power mech).  I would love if they tuned down the damage modifiers a bit and rescaled coefficients but that’s a mountain of work.  It just really limits our options.

 

(also don’t forget they nerfed core healing recently which isn’t great considering it was done specifically for Mech 😅)

[Jerus.4350]

5 hours ago, SleepyBat.9034 said:

I think the biggest issue is that Scrapper and Holosmith has no tradeoff compared to Core Engineer other then the F5 skill.

Considering how well Core Engi is doing right now I don’t really see a need.  At least in PVE it’s one of the best performing core specs. 
 

That said Elite specs can’t Moa!

[Logos.3042]

On 9/19/2022 at 5:02 PM, wasss.1208 said:

In my oppinion, the biggest design flaw is also what makes it interesting. I'm talking about the kits. By making them "opt-in", A-net really cut the tree under themselves. They have no saying on how many we pick up, thus they are hard to balance around. If they balance kits with the idea, that people will run with a single kit, people who slot in more, will be incredibly powerful... if they balance them around the idea, that people will pick up 4, they'll be underwhelming. I wouldn't be surprised, if the next elit spec, or even the next Guild Wars game we get, had Engineer limited to one, or two kits.

Second would be the lack of melee weapons for core. Or just lack of weapons in general. We get pretty overloaded weapons on the elit specs because of this, so we are not forced to pick up as many kits, and we can play around with the new utility types. It isn't bad for the new specs, but pretty "eeh", for core.

Third would be general balance, although that got improved a lot, in the past few months. No more nerfs (except for shield) on core, because of an overperforming elit spec, and we finally see buffs on underused traitlines. Keep up the good work!

Absolutely.

1. No MH Core Power/melee weapon

2. kits should only be slot table in the elite slot or in the weapon swap slot. This would avoid the “stack more kits for more dps” issue that plagues engineer.

 

Edited October 8, 2022 by Logos.3042

[God.5728]

The biggest flaw for me is having no weapon swap. (Yes kits I know...)

But I am personally not a fan of the grenade spam every 4 seconds kit.

I am loving the new scrapper though. Having the buffs apply on gyro cast feels so much better and less clunky. Took them long enough to change it. Now I actually want to play more Scrapper over Mechanist whenever I can.

Edited October 9, 2022 by God.5728

[Kulvar.1239]

On 9/19/2022 at 8:25 PM, SleepyBat.9034 said:

Yeah but they can't do that for all classes, Core Necromancers trade-off is it loses core shroud.

Losing the core necromancer shroud skills is not a tradeoff. Just like losing core guardian virtues is not a tradeoff.

Supposedly the tradeoff for necromancer are

• Reaper : increased life force degeneration while in shroud.
• Scourge : shroud replaced with shades.
• Harbinger : shroud accumulate blight on self.

[draxynnic.3719]

I think they gave reaper as an example of a 'natural' tradeoff, and that probably extends to other necromancer specs as well as guardian specs: a large part of the point of the specs is that they change the profession mechanic into something else, so it's natural that they give up the old profession mechanic in exchange. Maybe the dial-back of the nerfs applied during the tradeoff craze will lead to reaper shroud degeneration being reduced, although that was largely presented as a balancing factor to giving reaper shroud more damage.

Personally, I think the biggest flaw was the lack of a core melee weapon.

[Lysico.4906]

Kits. They suck

[Bomboed.5697]

I think Kits should be our special mechanic on F keys instead of toolbelt. Like F1 and F2 are 2 slots for 2 kits, Making Engineer the only class with 3 weapons.

Also I hate how both Grenades and Mortar are fully ground-target weapons.
And I hate Bomb Kit entirely. It looks stupid, it play stupid. I would love it to be replaced with Rocket Launcher Kit.

[lorddarkflare.9186]

I am glad that many have seen the light: it is kits. It has ALWAYS been kits.

I guarantee you had the class been an expansion class like Revenant, then that design aspect would have been focused upon by the community and Arena Net would have been forced to change it.

And to be more clear, the biggest culprits are Bomb Kit and Grenade kit.

And that is not even getting into the hilarious overlap between Grenade, Bomb and Mortar kit. The combined functionality of those kits should be in a single kit, not 3.

Edited October 11, 2022 by lorddarkflare.9186

[draxynnic.3719]

Kits are the core of engineer (those and turrets, and turrets were taken out back and shot before HoT released). I can understand not liking specific kits, but if you hate the kit mechanic period, maybe engineer isn't for you?

[MrForz.1953]

I like when people decide that I shouldn't like an aspect that got me to keep playing on a class that I stayed on for 10 years.

[Kuma.1503]

I love kits, but they need to be modernized. 

Along with both pistols. 

[Luvi.2581]

I could do with having weapon swap. No, kits don't count.

[lorddarkflare.9186]

4 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

I love kits, but they need to be modernized. 

Along with both pistols. 

 

This. Obviously I mess with the class, been playing it since beta 2. But I think it is fair to point out when even CORE elements are busted.

I don't want kits gone, I want kits to work with the class in a way that does not fundamentally wreck its core balance and doom me to crutching grenade kit  for every DPS build.

Edited October 11, 2022 by lorddarkflare.9186

[draxynnic.3719]

Yeah, they can definitely do with modernisation. Grenade, mortar, and bomb kits especially. Even putting aside the awkwardness of using some of them, there's a degree of... well, intellectually I know the skills have different effects, but they mostly don't feel like different skills, and it's often just a case of spamming them out.

I'm also inclined to think that grenades should be reset to throwing one grenade by default, and recalibrate explosion traits accordingly.

Problems with a couple of kits being uninspiring and a bit awkward for some doesn't mean the whole system is flawed, though.

[lorddarkflare.9186]

6 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Yeah, they can definitely do with modernisation. Grenade, mortar, and bomb kits especially. Even putting aside the awkwardness of using some of them, there's a degree of... well, intellectually I know the skills have different effects, but they mostly don't feel like different skills, and it's often just a case of spamming them out.

I'm also inclined to think that grenades should be reset to throwing one grenade by default, and recalibrate explosion traits accordingly.

Problems with a couple of kits being uninspiring and a bit awkward for some doesn't mean the whole system is flawed, though.

 

There are only 7 kits.  3 being very questionable is already an issue. Those same 3 being 3/4 DPS kits is another. The last one being historically bad or degenerate based on meta is yet another issue.

[Gwynnion.7364]

Kits, turrets, and gadgets.  Core engineer is dependent on tools that are outdated and underpowered for the current state of play, and because everybody knows that and hates using them, they keep pushing elites designed to let you ignore them (unless you're forced to take them anyway, e.g., for a condi build), which disincentivizes the devs from going back and fixing them or making improvements to their related specializations.  And obviously, kits keep getting in the way of weapon swap and accessing other weapons.

It's a similar problem to elementalist where the core is bad but they keep trying to work around it instead of fixing it, and any improvements they do make to core just make the elites even more powerful because you can never truly circumvent it.  Condi engineers especially end up playing piano with kits just as much as elementalists do because for some things, there just aren't any other options, even if they are subpar.