Guild Wars 2

I just recently started playing the game and my first choice was an engineer. I liked the concept of the class and decided to try it even though people called it underpowered.

However, before I had even cleared Metrica Province, I had died countless times and I had to wait around near skill challenges and veteran enemies until another player came along so I could overcome them. It seemed like I was near-death and desperately pulling out all the stops constantly.

Frustrated, I decided to play Guardian. The paladin-ishness of the class isn’t thematically what I wanted, but I heard it was a very solo-friendly class, so I gave it a shot. What a cakewalk!

With the engineer, I felt like my attacks were little more than a plink-plink-plink, with little hints of poison and bleeding sprinkled lightly around.

With the guardian, my attacks are like SMASH-SMASH-SMASH! And every single attack heals me, and most heal people around me, and others buff me or shield me in addition to healing. I have not died yet.

And when I’m downed as a guardian, I can put a healing sigil on the ground and keep myself alive almost indefinitely! Whereas as an engineer, all I could do was throw junk. Then, one second before dying, the cooldown on a pushback ability would end and I’d be able to send enemies flying off. But before I could take advantage of the newfound distance to plink away at my enemies for a while with my handfuls of junk, I’d die. How silly!

Is there something I’m missing about the engineer? Is it supposed to be a hard mode class for really good players? Or is it really unbalanced? The game’s been out for a long while. I can understand a few bugs still remaining from launch, but for engineer to remain so terribly weak for so long after launch just seems strange to me, having played other MMOs where balance issues are addressed more quickly.

In the meantime, I’ll be playing my Guardian! It feels so great to play, and for the first time, I feel like Tyria is my oyster – instead of feeling like I’m the little fish in a big, scary sea.

Guardians don’t really hit hard, and the higher level you get the more you will realize this. Engies are just in a bad place in every aspect at the moment. If you want to just decimate things even at high level play a warrior or elementalist, Guardian is great if you are shooting for survivability however.

Aeonblade.8709:

Guardians don’t really hit hard, and the higher level you get the more you will realize this. Engies are just in a bad place in every aspect at the moment. If you want to just decimate things even at high level play a warrior or elementalist, Guardian is great if you are shooting for survivability however.

High level? Are you talking about PVE? for PVE Warriors are top tier….. in all other cases they are horrible- while a good condi engi is considered one of the strongest classes in spvp at the moment, is decent in world vs world, I would say the only weakness of an engi is PVE atm.

I have three engineers, from 80 down to 18. I love them. They aren’t guardians or warriors but I don’t find them weak either. My lowest one doesn’t even use turrets. It’s probably just more experience with them on my part.

Keep plugging away with yours. When you get a few more traits under the engineer’s tool belt you might start seeing a difference.

Something that most engineers realize is that taking a skillful player and putting them behind an engineer and then behind any other class, there is always a class that can outdo the Engineer in something. The only thing engineers have is a lot of CC. The bad part is that most of this CC is close range, if not all of it is. “We are the jack of all trades, but the master of none” is a motto that gets tossed around from time to time. Engineers specialize in sPvP combat since most of our CC abilities are close range, more specifically bunkering. We have toolbelt skill but its mediocre DPS compared to the other classes. So yeah you just gotta get use to other classes being better at you. Personally I find engineer will be very hard to balance or bring them up to speed in what other classes can do without reworking major class mechanics.

Since you’re an engineer Ill be sure to make sure you realize two things

As said before, we can do a ton of different things, but our class isn’t amazing at them. We dont do amazing DPS, we dont have amazing surviveability (most of it relies on CCing people). Theres always a class that can out do us.

For us to be effective, it takes a lot of practice with an engineer. This is why people consider engineer to be the hardest class to play (in terms of WvW/sPvP. PvE no class is really that hard to play honestly). Don’t bother making any complain threads. The engineer forums use to be filled ot the brim of those, but people gave up and the subforum for engineers is more…quiet. Most conversations will happen in one post a day haha.

I did an engineer and although they can be hard to play, they’re very fun. But if you’re not liking him initially, then dont bother sticking with him. Yeah, leveling is hard. I’d advise going with Bomb kit, Flamethrower, or elixer gun. Use pistol and shield as your main weapons.

Some realitvely easy and fun/good classes to play are mesmer, guardian, and Ranger. Ele, thiefs, and warriors can be a bit tough to play in PvP, though warrior is the best class for PvE.

I have both a guardian and an engineer.
I mostly play the engineer and only use my guardian to….to…. uhm… bore the hell out of me and to sleepwalk through cof? O_O Yeh that pretty much sums it up.

Personally, I dont consider engineer a beginner-friendly class. And also it´s not a straight-forward class like the guardian or warrior.

Only thing I can tell you for sure is that engineer is highly underestimated in what he can do.
Most people dont even know that engineer can give mini shadow refugee or that he can quite easily stack 20-25 stacks might or that he´s the class with the fastest applying conditions (in a wide variety) and also -if you go for it- the class with the most skills at hand.
And probably also the class with the most buttons pushed per second…

Just dont fully push the class aside from the very beginning. I also had a rough start with the engineer and had mine resting for ~2 months.
I played the game and gained some experience on my guardian and later on my mesmer. Then I came back to my engineer and…. I fell in love with it -

Treadstone.2564:

…
However, before I had even cleared Metrica Province, I had died countless times and I had to wait around near skill challenges and veteran enemies until another player came along so I could overcome them. It seemed like I was near-death and desperately pulling out all the stops constantly.

Frustrated, I decided to play Guardian.
…

You didnt even go further than metrica (!) but you already think you can know how bad engineer is???^^
seriously!!!!
go level him up to 80 play him for 1 month at lvl 80 at least and LEARN the class with full traits!

then he can be really really good especially in sPvP and WvW duels!

now delete this topic… you cant say guardian is better just because you didnt play longer than 3 hours on your engineer (which is enough to clear full metrica starting with lvl 1^^)

Every class is powerful compared to rangers and engineers. :-(

Also, level it with the Flamethrower.

Cero.5132:

I have both a guardian and an engineer.
I mostly play the engineer and only use my guardian to….to…. uhm… bore the hell out of me and to sleepwalk through cof? O_O Yeh that pretty much sums it up.

Personally, I dont consider engineer a beginner-friendly class. And also it´s not a straight-forward class like the guardian or warrior.

Only thing I can tell you for sure is that engineer is highly underestimated in what he can do.
Most people dont even know that engineer can give mini shadow refugee or that he can quite easily stack 20-25 stacks might or that he´s the class with the fastest applying conditions (in a wide variety) and also -if you go for it- the class with the most skills at hand.
And probably also the class with the most buttons pushed per second…

Just dont fully push the class aside from the very beginning. I also had a rough start with the engineer and had mine resting for ~2 months.
I played the game and gained some experience on my guardian and later on my mesmer. Then I came back to my engineer and…. I fell in love with it -

To clarify what he is saying, the engineer can do a lot because of combofields.

Smoke bombs = a ton of fast recharging area stealths. Stack it with more than explosive blast finisher (need good timing for this). Using a medkit and putting it on is considered using a healing skill. So that little trait that gives us might when we use a healing skill? Yeah, it works with that. Nades are the best condition applies in terms of speed, however a skill player in PvP can easily counter them, especially with condition removal. It takes a lot of practice to know where to aim the nades. P/P with nades is also very good for conditions.

Turrets are getting used a bit more often, i was messing around with a bunker spec, but a skilled player who is aware of turrets can easily take them out (their long CDs=once they die the engineer is at a large disadvantage). A big part of turrets is knowing where to place them.

So yeah engineers are about high apm (actions per min), the highest in the game, a ton about setup (we can do a lot, but you have to setup with turrets, combofields, combo finishers, using your environment, knowing where your enemy or you will land with knockbacks, etc), and about timing.

As he said, this class is not beginner friendly. Fun and awesome class, but not easy.

Orangensaft.7139:

You didnt even go further than metrica (!) but you already think you can know how bad engineer is???^^
seriously!!!!
go level him up to 80 play him for 1 month at lvl 80 at least and LEARN the class with full traits!

I don’t really do the carrot on the stick thing anymore. x_x

My first game was FFXI where you were forced to group and kill crabs for hours and hours on end. I kept playing because people said it got better. It never did!

Then in WoW my first character was a paladin, back when paladins were supremely boring, but I stuck it through because people said it got better. It never did, not even at the cap. I switched classes to warrior, which was fun from the get-go, and remained fun for over five years.

Since then I’ve had a policy of playing only what is fun from the get-go, or at least becomes fun within the first couple of hours, and I have yet to regret it!

I like the concept behind engineer but I can’t wait that long for it to stop being frustrating! I’m not really interested in becoming a gaming master, all I want to do is have some fun exploring and adventuring, and Engineer wasn’t making that possible for me.

And I was leveling with the flamethrower and bomb kit.

The bomb kit worked best for me but I found it underwhelming in terms of fun factor. Everyone else gets to use awesome spells and weapons and wave their hands around, and all I do is bend over repeatedly to put a bomb by the enemy’s ankles. Big Old Bomb was fun though.

Flamethrower looked cool but I kept running into situations where I’d be facing the enemy I want to hit but my character has the flamethrower angled down toward the ground, and when I attacked I’d just miss with every tick.

For a profession with guns and grenades and bombs in a mainly fantasy setting, I had been hoping engineers would hit appropriately hard, but it sounds like unless I get the perfect blend of stats and skills and put in much more effort than is required for most of the other professions, it’s not gonna be the profession for me. :X

Treadstone.2564:

Orangensaft.7139:

You didnt even go further than metrica (!) but you already think you can know how bad engineer is???^^
seriously!!!!
go level him up to 80 play him for 1 month at lvl 80 at least and LEARN the class with full traits!

…
I like the concept behind engineer but I can’t wait that long for it to stop being frustrating! I’m not really interested in becoming a gaming master, all I want to do is have some fun exploring and adventuring, and Engineer wasn’t making that possible for me.

ok then Guardian or Warrior are probably the best classes for you