Engi is Gutted.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

When I'm not specifically fighting Rory, Nate, Ambi, Jimmy guns (depending on the build) or Woodstock, I tend to agree with Kuma.

Like warrior constantly suffering mechanically for one mechanic that people abuse to be viable on the class (full counter), engie has a mountain of useless skills propped up by a single kit that synergizes so well with its traits that the devs seem to get paralyzed when it comes to introducing new options. (Nade kit).

Step off of full counter, your experience with warrior becomes a wretched slog of missing axe throws and greatsword swings that don't hit anyone.

Step off of nadekit and you're a walking munchkin that probably can be cced one time before violently exploding. 

But then @bethekey.8314 hits me with some MacGyver bullkitten and I don't care anymore. Can we just nerf this person then balance engie after?

At any rate it's important to consider the amount of things someone CAN'T play competitively instead of getting so caught up on one busted mechanic you judge the class as not worthy of buffs. Some of the finest people you'd meet play some weirdo flamethrower kit build but you never see them because its unviable vs players taking the game seriously, and kept that way because the devs see a ton of people playing nades (because it's all you can play) and invest all their time into microbalancing that instead of trying to address why nobody kitten plays anything but nades.

When's the last time you saw throw elixir x? Exactly. 

Edited July 29 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Voegelin.5642]

Grenade kit isn't op. It doesn't hit that hard at all. Certsinly doesn't make engie strong.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

8 minutes ago, Voegelin.5642 said:

Grenade kit isn't op. It doesn't hit that hard at all. Certsinly doesn't make engie strong.

Not advocating for nerfs btw, just observing that one kit working can obstruct large issues with the class as far as  the balance is concerned.

Probably shouldn't be like that.

Edited July 29 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Kuma.1503]

5 hours ago, shion.2084 said:

They should take the snap targeting off of nades.   Make people click an area to attack.  I always find the snap targeting cheese.

I kinda agree tbh. It allos players to turn their brain off and run away while holding down the 1 key. 

But it's also a crutch that player should move away from as soon as they can. Snap targeting doesn't lead the target, and it has atrocious accuracy on anyone who isn't chasing after you in a straight line. You want to be moving your camera around and leading your shots so you can land your damage more consistently. 

I don't think removing this will quell people's complaints about fighting against nades. We'll get an initial celebration, then people will fight an engi who wasn't using this setting to begin with and the complaints will fire up again as usual. 

Edited July 29 by Kuma.1503

[Saiyan.1704]

Welcome brother

The water feels quite nice down here.

[bethekey.8314]

6 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

But then @bethekey.8314 hits me with some MacGyver bullkitten and I don't care anymore. Can we just nerf this person then balance engie after?

Lol you're very complimentary. I may make wonky builds work, but please don't confuse the lack of good Engi mains with me being uniquely skilled. Maybe that was true years ago.

1 hour ago, Kuma.1503 said:

But it's also a crutch that player should move away from as soon as they can. Snap targeting doesn't lead the target, and it has atrocious accuracy on anyone who isn't chasing after you in a straight line. You want to be moving your camera around and leading your shots so you can land your damage more consistently. 

It's true that snap can be outperformed by someone adept at "instant" cast and aiming. But with quickness, the differences are minimized. They could easily keep snap targeting around for handicapped players and fix the issue by making nades slower and hit harder. Like they originally were lol. Oh, and remove the required trait in the process.

1 hour ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

Welcome brother

Misery does love company. Willbender and DH seem to do well right now imo. I do wish Firebrand was better after I learned how their books work like kits. That seems like a skilled playstyle that deserves reward (but not too OP in teamfights, I still remember 2v2/3v3 seasons repeatedly dominated by Scourge and Firebrand).

[Pengu.7481]

i used to play holo alot up until a year ago. i simply just gave up and went back to my mesmer.

a few things that made me stop is that while holo is still decent, every other class is great.

it used to be that one of holo's main ways of mitigating dmg was cc'ing the enemy, thats no longer possible when everyone is shitting out aegis and stab.

sustain is fcked unless u go meme AED build. meanwhile your dmg is on par with everyone else. but dmg is about all you have 😄 

the amount of work i have to put in to beat players in a 1v1 on holo compared to pressing f1 on virtu and doing 10k+ unblockables is laughable. so yea i just stopped.

 

as to what to do. well its all wishful thinking at this point but i would love to get turrets reworked, make kits not stuck in core balance. or give engi weapon swap. preferably all 3

wep swap might not be the best tho since every weapon feels like a joke at this point,

who thought making shortbow a melee weapon was a good idea?

give rifle some dmg back, its worse than before they did the "rework".

offhand pistol still misses at pointblank range.

sword is a joke unless u are on holo and can utilize heatlevels. 

spear is only good if u allign all the planets in the solar system and somehow make the burst land at the same time

 

edit: and kitten nade kit, never liked it and i will refuse to use it until the game dies

Edited July 30 by Pengu.7481

[Voegelin.5642]

53 minutes ago, Pengu.7481 said:

i used to play holo alot up until a year ago. i simply just gave up and went back to my mesmer.

a few things that made me stop is that while holo is still decent, every other class is great.

it used to be that one of holo's main ways of mitigating dmg was cc'ing the enemy, thats no longer possible when everyone is shitting out aegis and stab.

sustain is fcked unless u go meme AED build. meanwhile your dmg is on par with everyone else. but dmg is about all you have 😄 

the amount of work i have to put in to beat players in a 1v1 on holo compared to pressing f1 on virtu and doing 10k+ unblockables is laughable. so yea i just stopped.

 

as to what to do. well its all wishful thinking at this point but i would love to get turrets reworked, make kits not stuck in core balance. or give engi weapon swap. preferably all 3

wep swap might not be the best tho since every weapon feels like a joke at this point,

who thought making shortbow a melee weapon was a good idea?

give rifle some dmg back, its worse than before they did the "rework".

offhand pistol still misses at pointblank range.

sword is a joke unless u are on holo and can utilize heatlevels. 

spear is only good if u allign all the planets in the solar system and somehow make the burst land at the same time

 

edit: and kitten nade kit, never liked it and i will refuse to use it until the game dies

I enjoy holo shortbow for support and some of the skills.  Sword and shield are so much stronger for melee though. With all the weapons now, the kits of engies aren't as unique. Every class can swap the equivalent of kits. That change needs to be made, weapon swap, just to keep the uniqueness of kits (having more options as engie).

Edited July 30 by Voegelin.5642
Adding stuff

[Endo.1652]

On 7/29/2024 at 12:22 PM, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

When's the last time you saw throw elixir x? Exactly. 

When I fought one of the engis you mentioned actually. XD

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

13 minutes ago, Endo.1652 said:

When I fought one of the engis you mentioned actually. XD

Ladies and gentlemen of the court

Aint that a sick kitten point tho

[N A T E.3108]

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

 

Edited July 31 by N A T E.3108

[N A T E.3108]

On 7/27/2024 at 1:56 AM, bethekey.8314 said:

Engineer received heavier and faster nerfs than Vindicator despite being less impactful in the meta for less time. Even their "buff" like adding Lich to Elixir X is a nerf.

Without a second weapon, Engineer has to do more with less utility slots than every other class. Despite this, Engi Shortbow and Spear are some of the least complete weapons in the game without any hard defense built in. Shortbow is arguably a melee weapon too. This leads to Engineers who spec for damage becoming the most "glass" (1 stunbreak, low health, armor, 1 block) spec in the game without the "cannon" follow-up.

Scrapper had its elite reduced to irrelevance, its superspeed reduced by half(?), innate quickness completely removed without rebalancing, and is inherently restricted to power builds by its barrier mechanic.

Mechanist is THE joke of the PvP scene and has been for years, to the point people flame their teammates for throwing by playing it. For a full toolbelt sacrifice, it was built around a strong pet and alacrity. Due to a rune mechanic that no longer exists and a rifle spec that was never even meta, it now has neither.  Never mind that all Engineer's utilities are balanced around a secondary toolbelt skill, a core element of design that Mech completely ignores (lose access to half our stunbreak options, Medkit etc.). Oh, and it also hard nerfs itself when the pet is separate from the player, which is the entire point of a pet mechanic.

Turrets remain the most immobile, easiest to kill, and lowest damage pets in the game.

Meanwhile, Ranger is flourishing with new pets, well-rounded weapons, and plentiful stealth to the point of diehard Ranger main's asking "you sure about this"?

Most kits haven't seen success in competitive play in I don't know, 5+ years? And the one that has, Grenade kit, forces some degenerate, carpal-tunnel-inducing, trait-requiring, about-facing, snap-targeting, spam playstyle that no one enjoys and causes collateral nerfs to the rest of Engineer. What's it going to take Anet, the seventeenth adjustment to Grenades to solve everything?

Projectiles and blocks, Engineer's bread and butter offense and defense, are faced with a fresh hell of unblockables and projectile hate. Condi Reaper has what, 10/16 sec with unblockable? Ranger gets two projectile hate bubbles? Warrior can infinitely chain reflects? Virt can reflect your projectiles while invulnerable while hitting through your block with its own projectiles. Amazing.

No Engineer spec is meta relevant, and no Engineer spec but Holo has been in years. There is no surprise here; the people balancing Engineer in PvP have no clue or consistent vision.

To end on a quote from a former dev in their balance discord:

"The heavy use of kits and thus feeling of playing Core Engi with a pet instead of toolbelt was one of the chief complaints we saw most both on surveys and in feedback elsewhere, and definitely something we wanted to address. It's going to be fairly subjective, but you're the first person I've seen say they play engi because of the feel of using kits."

I don't know who you're surveying and listening to, but please, look at your track record and stop. It's embarrassing and needs to be said. Hardly anyone even plays Engineer anymore to voice criticisms and offer good feedback.

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

[coro.3176]

That is classic anet balancing. Skills/traits get nerfed to try and target overperforming builds. Overperforming builds get changed or removed. Skills/traits never get unnerfed.

Just a few that annoy me most:

• Incendiary Powder and Blowtorch - both got hit with effectively over 50% damage nerfs in Feb 2020, despite not even being good then, and have never been unnerfed.
• Gear Shield - crucial defense skill got nerfed from 3s to 2s (as part of Anet's efforts to kill a Holo or Scrapper build, I forget), and then lost its cooldown reduction entirely when Power Wrench got reworked.
• Sneak Gyro - was nerfed so hard, it would be a questionable pick as a utility skill, let alone an elite
• Sharpshooter - this would be funny if it wasn't so sad

[N A T E.3108]

On 7/29/2024 at 11:22 AM, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

When I'm not specifically fighting Rory, Nate, Ambi, Jimmy guns (depending on the build) or Woodstock, I tend to agree with Kuma.

Like warrior constantly suffering mechanically for one mechanic that people abuse to be viable on the class (full counter), engie has a mountain of useless skills propped up by a single kit that synergizes so well with its traits that the devs seem to get paralyzed when it comes to introducing new options. (Nade kit).

Step off of full counter, your experience with warrior becomes a wretched slog of missing axe throws and greatsword swings that don't hit anyone.

Step off of nadekit and you're a walking munchkin that probably can be cced one time before violently exploding. 

But then @bethekey.8314 hits me with some MacGyver bullkitten and I don't care anymore. Can we just nerf this person then balance engie after?

At any rate it's important to consider the amount of things someone CAN'T play competitively instead of getting so caught up on one busted mechanic you judge the class as not worthy of buffs. Some of the finest people you'd meet play some weirdo flamethrower kit build but you never see them because its unviable vs players taking the game seriously, and kept that way because the devs see a ton of people playing nades (because it's all you can play) and invest all their time into microbalancing that instead of trying to address why nobody kitten plays anything but nades.

When's the last time you saw throw elixir x? Exactly. 

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

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

Just now, N A T E.3108 said:

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

While that is true

you're exempt from my quickly crumbling attempt to be objective for 30 seconds because of your prybar setups anyway 😭

 

[WhoWantsAHug.3186]

Power engi sucks right now. Tools holo is still decent but that's it.

If you're trying to play engi, you need to go a condi variant. It's real easy to get creative with the builds IMO, because you can run shortbow and forego running Firearms. I'd say condi engi and especially condi holo is in a pretty kitten good spot ATM. There are literally so many build options. 

[Voegelin.5642]

On 7/29/2024 at 4:34 PM, Saiyan.1704 said:

Welcome brother

The water feels quite nice down here.

I notice that engineer isn't even captioned in that meme. It figures.

[N A T E.3108]

5 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

Power engi sucks right now. Tools holo is still decent but that's it.

If you're trying to play engi, you need to go a condi variant. It's real easy to get creative with the builds IMO, because you can run shortbow and forego running Firearms. I'd say condi engi and especially condi holo is in a pretty kitten good spot ATM. There are literally so many build options. 

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

[arazoth.7290]

37 minutes ago, N A T E.3108 said:

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

Reading this took me too long to realise it was sarcasm 😺

[bethekey.8314]

1 hour ago, N A T E.3108 said:

Get ready to be meta-strong soon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFm_0wQJ2eY

7 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

If you're trying to play engi, you need to go a condi variant. It's real easy to get creative with the builds IMO, because you can run shortbow and forego running Firearms. I'd say condi engi and especially condi holo is in a pretty kitten good spot ATM. There are literally so many build options. 

Condi does feel stronger to me right now, yeah.

But idk what you're talking about running Shortbow as a condi weapon, or that Condi Engis are "in a good spot" because of build options. Shortbow applies Vulnerability, that's it lol. Builds options != competitive builds. All classes have more build options nowadays with relics.

Outside of myself and a few people I know closely, I've yet to see one person choosing to play Engineer at high ranks because it excels at a particular role. I also generally wish for enemy teams to have Engineers because they're so easy to kill. 

[Flowki.7194]

Game was far more balanced when more holos where in it, fking tired of reaper/wb/spb having high impact on games @skill levels they would be dead on holo. I also dueled a lot of fun core engi builds.. would sooner see that hit meta/great as a duelist or roamer.

 

There was a hilarious comment in map talk not long ago. "finally got my reward and going back to pve, where I don't have to deal with SPB beta duelists". Thats going to stick for me now, bloated specs that allow betas to compete 😜 Beta duelists, rofl.

Edited August 2 by Flowki.7194

[N A T E.3108]

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

[mov.1246]

I am on the way to get ultimate genius title... but gosh, this is hell.

engineer is completely trash tier right now and is outperformed by any other class which is considered as meta.

you need be be twice as good as your opponent to be able to win anything. our defensives are literally non existant, aswell our burst potential.

there is no reason to bring an engineer to pvp, every other class can do better, whatever you want to do.

i am happy everytime i see another enginner on the other team, because i know: he is gutted like me.

[shion.2084]

@N A T E.3108@bethekey.8314  We're just gonna have to 5 man scrapper again and queue unranked in protest till they make good changes 🙂

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

Just fought a spear mechanist that will remain nameless because they stowed mag pull and sent me on a spirit journey to find my ankles

We're so back 💀💀🍢