Devs.... To make core Engi with nades viable and survivable... could we have a power weapon that works with shield?

[shion.2084]

I was trying to see what I could do with core Engi and grenade kit.  For survivability I thought hey shield might not be a bad idea... I don't really need rifle cause I have nades.  This makes it immediately apparent that I would be using pistol for my main hand weapon... on my power build.   

Here's a thought.... how about making shield a main hand power weapon.   Maybe in main hand it is a buzzsaw or something?

[lorddarkflare.9186]

I don't think we need an exotic solution to the core Engie mainhand problem: just make pistol a hybrid weapon. I think we overthink this too much.

[shion.2084]

Hybrid weapons tend not to be particularly good at either.

[Alcatraznc.3869]

Engineer dont really have the luxury other class have as far as weapon diversity goes so if you want to improve your survivability as an engineer while keeping a decent amount of damage you'lll either have to give up some stats for toughness/vitality or give up some damage trait for survivability trait. 

[Jerus.4350]

7 hours ago, shion.2084 said:

I was trying to see what I could do with core Engi and grenade kit.  For survivability I thought hey shield might not be a bad idea... I don't really need rifle cause I have nades.  This makes it immediately apparent that I would be using pistol for my main hand weapon... on my power build.   

Here's a thought.... how about making shield a main hand power weapon.   Maybe in main hand it is a buzzsaw or something?

You know, I had other thoughts, then I saw the Buzzsaw mainhand shield idea, and screw it, lets do this!😄

[draxynnic.3719]

Personally, I've held the opinion for a long time now that CORE engineer should have a melee weapon. Then they can stop the current trend of every elite spec having a melee weapon just to make sure the elite spec can go melee.

The most obvious choices have been taken, but maybe they could go with an aggressive Swiss army knife theme.

[Legion.9617]

Or, you know, give core engineer the revenant treatment (with a twist) and expand its arsenal by adding a power-based DPS off-hand. Torch please? Or at least warhorn? Also "fixes" the issue that both mechanist and holosmith don't have a real off-hand.

[SleepyBat.9034]

14 hours ago, shion.2084 said:

Hybrid weapons tend not to be particularly good at either.

Well Grenade Kit is hybrid and it's plenty good at power and conditions.

[Stalima.5490]

On 10/7/2022 at 4:07 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:

Personally, I've held the opinion for a long time now that CORE engineer should have a melee weapon. Then they can stop the current trend of every elite spec having a melee weapon just to make sure the elite spec can go melee.

The most obvious choices have been taken, but maybe they could go with an aggressive Swiss army knife theme.

I think the problem with engi's elites is that there isn't really that many options for a ranged elite spec, only thing i can think of is some kinda techbow or control staff/rod, maybe even an ipad focus...

The dagger is one that I'd expect to be a real possibility though at some point just because of that concept.

In theory they could do a spec that flips the damage role of the rifle and the pistol around for a condi rifle and power pistol but who knows really, maybe the firearms should have done something like that, not many weapons but lots of customisations for the ones it does have etc.

Edited October 8, 2022 by Stalima.5490

[Logos.3042]

On 10/6/2022 at 12:29 PM, shion.2084 said:

I was trying to see what I could do with core Engi and grenade kit.  For survivability I thought hey shield might not be a bad idea... I don't really need rifle cause I have nades.  This makes it immediately apparent that I would be using pistol for my main hand weapon... on my power build.   

Here's a thought.... how about making shield a main hand power weapon.   Maybe in main hand it is a buzzsaw or something?

Yes, it’s embarrassing that there is no MH power/melee weapon to pair w shield!

[draxynnic.3719]

On 10/8/2022 at 5:36 PM, Stalima.5490 said:

I think the problem with engi's elites is that there isn't really that many options for a ranged elite spec, only thing i can think of is some kinda techbow or control staff/rod, maybe even an ipad focus...

The dagger is one that I'd expect to be a real possibility though at some point just because of that concept.

In theory they could do a spec that flips the damage role of the rifle and the pistol around for a condi rifle and power pistol but who knows really, maybe the firearms should have done something like that, not many weapons but lots of customisations for the ones it does have etc.

Two choices of bow that can be combined with trick arrows, there's precedent for a tech based lightning staff in some event items (particularly the ghostbuster-themed staff weapon in Ashford), control rod as you say for sceptre - that's 3-4 possibilities before we even get to weirder options or offhands. Meanwhile, mechanist is a concept I'd expect to have had a ranged weapon (see, for instance, Inquest golemancers)... except that it needed a melee weapon since it wasn't on core.

 

On 10/7/2022 at 4:33 PM, Legion.9617 said:

Or, you know, give core engineer the revenant treatment (with a twist) and expand its arsenal by adding a power-based DPS off-hand. Torch please? Or at least warhorn? Also "fixes" the issue that both mechanist and holosmith don't have a real off-hand.

So are you suggesting that core should have three offhands and still only have OH pistol to pair them with? 😖

[Ashgar.3024]

I've been thinking that for a while too and its not just core that get screwed, healscrapper for example gets shafted too as scrapper is clearly a power build but Hammer isn't a particularly good support weapon so you're stuck on Pistol/Shield.

 

Core Engi should have had access to Mace from the start (you know, to hammer stuff), just give Mecanists Torch or something (a welding torch).

Edited October 11, 2022 by Ashgar.3024

[Kulvar.1239]

On 10/7/2022 at 8:33 AM, Legion.9617 said:

Or, you know, give core engineer the revenant treatment (with a twist) and expand its arsenal by adding a power-based DPS off-hand. Torch please? Or at least warhorn? Also "fixes" the issue that both mechanist and holosmith don't have a real off-hand.

Focus, as a brass knuckle.

[Vordrax.5243]

On 10/11/2022 at 5:26 AM, Kulvar.1239 said:

Focus, as a brass knuckle.

 

Focus mainhand AND offhand. I know everyone is thinking "sweet, brass knuckle foci" and I'm over here like "it's time to make an engineer named The Professor and beat people to death with dual-wielded books."

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

I keep asking for Fragmentation Shot, which was formerly named Explosion Shot. It has an explosive animation with multi-target damage (= explosion). If they would do this minor change, the pistol auto-attack would have significantly higher impact with power-builds. That way you could choose if you want to boost the pistol on power (Explosives) or on condition (Fire Arms) or both at once, with two trait-lines in use. It would not be a real power-weapon, but with the reworked Explosives traitline, it would 'work' to a certain degree. 

 

[Ghos.1326]

Some time back, they made pistol mainhand somewhat of a hybrid option. Some coefficients in the power category were increased to reflect this.

However, Engi pistol mainhand suffers from one thing that prevents it from being good, in general: the auto attack.

Currently, tooltip says it's a .5 cast time. In reality, it's closer to .9 seconds cast time.

They need to fix this ASAP. Anet doesn't listen too well to great feedback, though, and will instead cater to people that want to create a busted game.

So we may be SoL folks.

[Okhu.7948]

Engineer should have had a MH power mace when the game released. Mechanist should have had a staff as the elite spec weapon. Thats how I feel anyway.

[draxynnic.3719]

42 minutes ago, Okhu.7948 said:

Engineer should have had a MH power mace when the game released. Mechanist should have had a staff as the elite spec weapon. Thats how I feel anyway.

It's become abundantly clear that not having a core melee weapon is forcing ArenaNet to reinvent the wheel every time they want an engineer elite specialisation to have any melee capability at all.

[coro.3176]

Core doesn't need a power mainhand to be viable (and survivable). It needs its existing pistols to actually work. That means

• Pistol needs to do more damage - it's extremely weak in damage output considering it is short range, and also that its damage is mostly condition, which requires time to tick and can be cleansed. As a start, it needs to fire much faster. It's a travesty that it *still* fires like 65% slower than its listed attack speed.
• Pistol needs better CC - its CC is extremely outdated. Blind does not go nearly as far as it used to. In the past, most high-damage skills delivered their damage in a single hit. Now, most high-damage are multi-hit abilities and blind only mitigates the first - sometimes not even negating 10% of the full skill. A single short immob isn't good these days either. The game is tuned around long & repeating immobs from Ranger, and there's much more passive cleanse. Players sometimes don't even notice they were hit by Glue Shot they're cleansing so often.

Just compare what Harbinger(released 2022) pistol does to what Engi pistol(released 2012) does. It hasn't kept pace with the game.

Edited October 24, 2022 by coro.3176

[Kuma.1503]

On 10/6/2022 at 7:14 PM, Jerus.4350 said:

You know, I had other thoughts, then I saw the Buzzsaw mainhand shield idea, and screw it, lets do this!😄

YES. Let me be an Engi dual wielding shields. 

I dream of this day. 

[SleepyBat.9034]

On 10/24/2022 at 2:43 PM, coro.3176 said:

Core doesn't need a power mainhand to be viable (and survivable). It needs its existing pistols to actually work. That means

• Pistol needs to do more damage - it's extremely weak in damage output considering it is short range, and also that its damage is mostly condition, which requires time to tick and can be cleansed. As a start, it needs to fire much faster. It's a travesty that it *still* fires like 65% slower than its listed attack speed.
• Pistol needs better CC - its CC is extremely outdated. Blind does not go nearly as far as it used to. In the past, most high-damage skills delivered their damage in a single hit. Now, most high-damage are multi-hit abilities and blind only mitigates the first - sometimes not even negating 10% of the full skill. A single short immob isn't good these days either. The game is tuned around long & repeating immobs from Ranger, and there's much more passive cleanse. Players sometimes don't even notice they were hit by Glue Shot they're cleansing so often.

Just compare what Harbinger(released 2022) pistol does to what Engi pistol(released 2012) does. It hasn't kept pace with the game.

I think I have to disagree that pistol needs a cc skill, we already have two with shield and it's not like engineer isn't loaded with cc skills already.

[coro.3176]

It's not that MH pistol needs a hard CC like rifle. It's that the current soft CC it has is outdated. It needs something to bring it up

• a short daze like on Flashbang
• multiple stacks of blind (game-wide change probably)
• a pulsing effect that ticks a few times per target hit

Also consider that condi builds should want offhand pistol instead of shield (if OH pistol didn't also suck so much).  That combo needs some defensive CC, or else much more offense to balance out the lack of it.

•