Just to put in perspective how effective this range buff is with any sort of terrain advantage, just take a look at T1. An Engi can go to Festenplatz and get on that big rock overhanging the valley between fest and the ramp to Destro's WC and easily pick off everyone trying to come out of the WC and go down the ramp. I can reach into the group of guards there at the ramp entrance with absolutely no risk to myself. To get to me they would have to come down the side of the ramp, then run across the valley, up and around to get up to me - the entire time having me and my turrets raining shots down on them.
I find it kind of funny that people are mentioning things like SWs and Sorcs/BWs killing people in other situations, like out in the open, yet completely overlook the disadvantages of those classes:
- Sorcs/BWs are capable of high single target and AoE damage, but are also draining their own HP while putting out max damage, and do not have a ton of effective CC. Having BWs in your group means youre needing to focus more heals on them instead of healing tanks and melees
- SWs basically have laughable AoE damage, and against heavily armored tanks & melees are very ineffective in T4. The 1 tool they had against them that could bust through that armor (Festering arrow with bypass resistances tactic) has been nerfed to 50% bypass. And guess what. You need to stand still for 3 seconds every time you use it.Their main use in a group now is CC, picking off squishy targets, and a heal debuff. Theyre not exactly the go to class when youre looking for a damage dealer for premades. Can an SW do something like kill a tank in 1 v 1? Sure, but it takes 2 minutes of kiting them around and hoping your CC skills arent blocked or they arent immune at the time. Can they put out good damage? Sure, but it generally comes at a cost such as sacrificing group tactics in exchange for your own DPS, increased AP cost, loss of defensive power, having to get closer, etc.
Neither of those classes has the advantage of a pet/turret which assists them while kiting people around, or that will continue doing damage when you are hit with disarms, stuns, silences, etc. Both of those classes have to run through nearly half of an Engi/Magus's range before they can even start hitting that engi/magus, and by that time they likely have multiple dots on them and have taken some direct damage. Also, unlike the SW, an Engi/Magus has multiple AoEs that can put out a ton of damage when they're combined.
Im also kind of sick of this whole "But an engi has to stand still for 16 seconds" excuse, because of the following:
1) You do not need to stand still. There is a radius around your pet / turret where the buff is maintained, allowing you a small area in which you can kite or get out of LoS before the buff begins to drop off
2) The entire buff does not drop off instantly if you move out of the radius. It takes just as long for the 8 stacks to drop off as it does to build them, so you still have a partial buff while kiting outside of that radius.
3) The buff does not reset with a new turret. You can run, let a couple stacks drop off, then instantly redeploy turret and the buff builds back up from however many stacks you already have, it does not reset to 0 stacks.
Any decent magus / engi isnt going to just run around waiting for someone to get close before they deploy a turret. At the slightest hint that a fight is coming that turret is already deployed and buff is building in preparation. Then IF they find they need to move, they can do so easily with needing to rebuild the buff. As an example, you deploy your turret, starting firing at people, then find your group getting pushed back a bit and need to reposition. You can back up a few feet with no loss of power. If you find you need to back up further, you can move for 8 seconds to get into a better position and still have a 20% damage buff and 25% range buff, use instant redeploy, and build right back up to 40/50% buffs within another 8 seconds.
And you know, the buff itself isn't even all THAT bad if not for the fact that it comes completely free with no downside. No lowered damage on skills, no increased AP cost, no speccing, no tactic slot, no loss of defensive power. Its just there. If there were some cost associated with it, AT LEAST a tactic slot that needs to be used in place of something else, in order to gain the range bonus it would be more reasonable. Preferably it would be something similar to how SWs are setup. You can spec into a range boost for 1 tree of skills only, which requires wasting mastery points to get it AND you need to slot the tactic.
