Class Discussion: Engineer

I wanted to start discussing individual classes as we’ve been over the broader issues of characters and variants. First up; Engineer.

Now Engineer is a class I’ve always liked. Getting those teleporters up and defending them with sonic mines and getting the turret bots up, and also in GW1, getting a turret bot up near the Garden, can be a pain if the plants camp them hard, especially in GW1 with its soldier/peashooter problems, but I enjoy being a class that helps the team while also being able to hold your own. On offense, engineers are still fun and I love using the jackhammer to get around.

I like the GW1 version most of all. I love the drones, especially how the basic drone sounds like someone making an engine noise with their mouth, and while big bolt blaster is effective, I’ve never liked it much. I still dig the class in GW2, and get that with the pirate parrot they wanted to replace the drones for the engineer, but I also recall something about it being still in the files and wish the GW1 drones were an alternate ability in GW2. GW2 engineer still feels good to play. My favorite for both games is the plumber, but I use the mechanic a lot for getting the crazy target quests done, painter to play as a kind of ersatz sniper, and AC Perry because he’s considered a bit weak, and I like to try to make weaker characters work.

The variants do need some balancing of course. Some has improved from GW to GW2, electrician is much less dangerous in GW2, and some other changes have mostly improved the class as whole when comparing GW to GW2. They even tweaked Turbo Jackhammer to match the regular one a bit better in GW2.

Then BfN came, and part of why I posted engineer first is to bring this up. I’ll play any class and variant in GW and GW2, from Disco Chomper to Toxic Brainz and everything in between, but BfN made Engineer the first class or variant in any of the shooters that I legitimately don’t enjoy playing, and they aren’t much fun to play against either. I may like them more than the swarm classes, since at least they have full customizations and don’t rely on the suicide drones, but they’ve been made so boring to play and annoying to play against that they absolutely need to change for GW3. The best way to play them, especially on TT and defending, is to find a spot to park the turret, and just hang out in its aura, spamming your concrete projectiles, especially if you have the rubber upgrade equipped and on maps like Turning Point’s first capture point. Even one engineer there is a pain, imagine 2-4 of them spamming nonstop, it’s 0 fun to fight against, and boring to play as.

Now one can argue that if I find the character’s style boring to not play them or play them differently. And that’s the issue here, in the GW games I’ll play any character and enjoy it, some more than others, but I don’t mind playing Disco Chomper or Metal Petal, or anyone else. If you play engineer to their strengths, you just park and spam. It’s just so effective, even in non-TT modes. So indeed, I hardly play the character now, and was one I spent extra coins on to reach cap more than average among the BfN characters.

BfN also took the teleporters away. We could have long and perhaps contentious discussions over this being good or bad, but either way, it takes away the character’s utility and he feels less support than ever in BfN. Bfn tried in many ways to increase the interdependency of the various classes to more closely match games like OW, but Engineer is actually less team supportive in BfN than ever before, and more of a self-supporting wrecking machine.

Double time is another issue with engineer in BfN. It has its uses, like in gnome bomb, getting the bombs to the mallowmortar at the last point in Loggy Acres, and a few other cases, but it’s just not that much help and feels like a wasted ability. If sprint were removed, we could return to using the jackhammer as an ability.

As for the model changes. I don’t mind him in any game and he’s a very chunky boy in BfN! I always found it odd that some variants lack the plumber’s crack…including the plumber himself! Good stuff all around here.

As for his return to GW3; I want him and his variants back, and of course at least 1 or 2 more variants. If his kit is changed at all, I’d be happy to see it return to GW style with GW2 and further balance fixes, use the big bolt blaster as an alternate ability to the 2 types of drone if people want that, but I love the drones and we need more abilities that aren’t turret modes. The turret and double time of BfN have to go, but that weapon needs to be reverted more than anything! Even without the turret letting the character spam, it’s an obnoxious thing to deal with. Also, make the TT maps with teleporter spots again. It adds a nice wrinkle to the game and can have some exciting battles to add to the capture points.

If you wanted the character to be more supportive and BfN style, although I hope that’s not the case, at least separate the turret and the dispenser (a TF2 reference but that what it reminds me of; a turret with a built in, never depleting, AoE dispenser), get rid of double time, and fix the main weapon! Maybe make the turret time out and despawn faster and have an ammo supply crate that zombies can automatically use in its AoE but it can be destroyed and runs out of ammo eventually as 2 separate abilities instead of just one like in BfN. That would make them feel more like TF2 engineers, and not sure that was the objective or not, but engineer cannot be left as is for the next shooter.