Guild Wars 2

I’m new to GW2 but not to mmo’s. After starting out with SWG, then going to WoW then Lotro, KoTR, trying WoT and WoWS I’ve gotten burned out on most of the aforementioned games. GW2 has kept my interest although it’s been a bit of a switch due to the different style of play but it’s been a welcome change. I’ve leveled a Ranger to 37, Guardian to 35, Necro to 22, Eng to 34. Hunter was my main in WoW and I got tired of playing that class due to heavy pvp although it’s still fun to play sometimes.

My issue is weapon swapping and the seemingly endless combinations different weapons give. I’m not so much into pvp and prefer pve/dungeons. I realize I’m probably hindering myself by not adapting to the weapon swapping thing but I also want to progress in the game. I like Engineer/FT even though it doesn’t seem to be the highest dps spec to go with. I’m concerned that I’m spinning my wheels in the sense that in order to be truly useful in dungeons I need to make use of weapon/kit swapping. Would it be pointless to even continue in light of that, or is it acceptable to continue with my own personal play style? I know ultimately the decision is mine, I just don’t want to be completely useless.

Engineer has 4 kits that you’ll be using anyway if you want to play to the best of your ability, so it’s in your best interests to learn them all since you’ll be using all of them at one point or another. Look up Youtube guides by people like Brazil, qT Eraser (he doesn’t have guides specifically but his videos are a good insight into what decent Engineer play looks like), and others.

Think about it like this: Weapon sets are just a bunch of tools. You need different tools to adapt to different situations. If you aren’t as skilled with one tool as you are with another for the situation/encounter, you’re not going to perform as well as you should do. In that sense Engineer is quite difficult since you have to constantly rotate between weapon kits if you want to maintain maximum DPS.

TL;DR – If you don’t get used to weapon swapping now, you’ll have to do it later on anyway; so if you learn to do it now, you’ll avoid a lot of growing pain later on, so to speak, when you’re playing.

I played Engineer a long, long time ago but this is probably how I’d describe Engineer:

“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.” – Bruce Lee

Well, honestly, dungeons are kind of outdated (and fairly unrewarding- they’ve been nerfed and abandoned by ANET) content at this point. If you have friends you run dungeons with, you’ll be fine doing your own thing. If you’re talking about doing raids, nobody can say, just yet, since there aren’t any. If you’re talking about doing increasing levels of fractals, you should be fine until you hit around Fractal level 50 or so. But weapon swapping is kind of a useful skill, and I think you’ll end up naturally wanting to swap when your skills are still all on cooldown, especially since Engi kits can do so many awesome things.