Naix.8156

The path to tweaking core engineer would be via making 3 traitlines desirable enough that the player has to choose (ala core guardian + warrior) or going the harder route and tweaking kits and the elite toolbelt skills. Buffing the offensive or offensive-utility of toolbelt elite skills would help the core engineer out. Holos don't have access to the elite toolbelt slot, and by buffing the offensive efficiency of that skill slot it makes it less effective for tanky scrappers. Kits are a tough one to touch. You'd want to again push the offensive output of kits so that it could be an option to select as tradeoff for Holo. Holo has a short kit duration cd lockout associated with it, and if you are using a kit you also aren't getting anything out of your Photon Forge - they don't synergize well by design. The more difficult part is that core engineer has really leaned on the survival and utility of kits to function, which are both things that a tanky scrapper would really benefit from as well. Base engineer's weapon selection also contributes to the issue as they aren't (and likely were never intended) to be self sufficient and instead would encourage pairing with utility skills to cover one another's short comings (or stack on their strong suit). TLDR - core engineer is pretty much completely eff'ed for competitive play; just be happy that it at least has a build option for raid content

If you join a wvw guild focused guild they would be able to help you with your build and explain stuff in comms (discord, ts, etc) to help you out.

You haven't taken into account damage bonus and reduction modifiers. If the guy was in zerk gear, scholars runes, food, etc the power value would be around 4100 at the top end; so likely you've underestimated the power value.

Warriors have a few traits that conditionally buff toughness:• Thick Skin - +180 toughness when above 75% hp• Spiked Armor - +150 toughness when you have retaliation. Gain 5s of retaliation when you block or are hit by a crit. --> You likely didn't have retaliation as a buff as your combat log shows you getting hit by necros shades, well of corruption and loss aversion. • Your screen shot is at a keep and you have the Presence of the Keep buff on you which is giving you +100 toughness (also +100 to power, precision, vitality stats). --> Based on the above, subtract 280 toughness from the value shown in the display window in the screen shot You don't know how buffed the warrior was (i.e. might stacks on him, bloodlust sigil stacks, stacks of Insight, vulnerability on you). Investing in toughness suffers diminishing returns: for each additional point of toughness you add to your build you get incrementally less and less reduction in damage. Direct damage continues to scale in a linear manner. The system was setup like this likely as a way to prevent a situation where a player could create an unkillable tank in pvp. (Sidenote: HoT especially took a massive dump on this system by adding flat percentage damage reduction modifiers and food to the game). Wastrel's Ruin has a +100% damage modifier if it hit you and you aren't using a skill at the time. If you were using a skill at the time he hit you, he would have crit you for 4,737 damage instead of 9,475. TLDR:• Stacking toughness is not the best way to go• The 9,475 damage hit you took is legit