Guild Wars 2

For instance, my engineer are currently using three turrets: flame, rifle and rocket. To get the rocket, I had to unlock five skills from one tier (including the flame- and rifle-turrets.) Naturally, if this had been a “normal” game, that means the next tier is always better. And yes, I do think the rocket turret is better than the other two. Which doesn’t matter, as I have all three.

But this isn’t a “normal” game. This is GW2. This is a game with the main focus being having fun. So are the later skills always better than the first ones? Or to put it better, will the old skills keep up through the game, or will they get outdated? So when I’m level 80, will the rifle-turret still be useable? I’m PvE only, btw, and haven’t considered dungeons yet. Too many bad experiences with those from other games.

No, a lot of early skills remain very relevant and part of endgame builds. The higher tier skills usually offer more utility or specialized stuff, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re better than the others. Just to give you an example, the engineer I’m currently playing for high level PvE content is running elixir gun (tier 3), grenades kit (tier 1) and bomb kit (tier 2), and grenade kit is actually my main source of damage.

That said, to be entirely honest with you, turrets don’t scale that great in general. They’re fine for solo play and if you need something to distract the enemies for you, but they are a bit lacking in utility and damage other than that. (I wasn’t happy with that fact personally, I used to run two turrets while leveling, but there it is.)

But if it works for you, and you stick to solo PvE (please don’t bring turrets if/when you want to give dungeons a shot, it’s not ideal at all), then yes, they are useable at level 80, rifle turret and rocket turret both.

Thanks. That was sort of what I hoped (skills scale) and also a surprise (turrets don’t?). I’m only level 26, and right now, the turrets do their job. Still, you made me think about changing my skills. I do have a flamethrower I like, so maybe that’ll be my main weapon. Guess I’ll have to extensively test skills and builds all night. Fortunately that’s awesome.

Turrets do scale, just… not very well, so they get a bit outclassed for higher level content. Like I said, for casual solo play they’re okay and kind of fun, but there’s a lot better in terms of like, efficiency.

If you want to talk engie builds or have any questions feel free to shoot me mail or whispers ingame at one of the names in my signature (the first preferably, as it’s my main account and I’m more likely to be online on it), I’d be glad to help.

You should try all the skills for 5-10 levels at least (or the equivalent amount of time). You’ll find that each has its own style, its own type of fun, it’s own efficiency. As you level up, you’ll also find that traits and combining skills (via rotations or combos or other variations of skilled play) will affect the fun and the efficiency.

Since you’ve tried turrets, try running 3 kits. After you do that for a while, try sticking to elixirs. Then try a mix. See what works for you.

Good luck and welcome to GW2.

I think the general idea is that the later, more expensive, skills are more complicated: either they have more effects or they’re more situational.

Early on (I can’t remember if it was changed during the betas or shortly after launch) there were no skill tiers, they cost different amounts of skill points but could be unlocked in any order. It was changed partially to give a sense of progression and partially to avoid players getting confused by their skills, let them unlock the more straight-forward ones first and the more elaborate ones later.

Thanks, guys! I know I keep talking about my engineer, but that’s because it is/was my main. I do have plenty of other characters, so this thread is more of a general skill thing. I’m still trying to decide what class to focus on. I’ve managed to put Warrior and Guardian down to the last places on the list, but mostly because they are so… normal. I’ve never played anything quite like an engineer before, and I’m currently having a ton of fun with my clone-army Mesmer. (“Yeah? You and what aremy?” poff “That one.” Lol.)

Anyway, this thread has helped me a lot. I love the fact skills don’t really gets outdated. It allows a lot of customization, which is good. And combined with all the fun classes, there’s tons of fun gameplay to be found here. Makes me wonder why I ever left the game, but this time I’m here to stay.

Danikat.8537:

Early on (I can’t remember if it was changed during the betas or shortly after launch) there were no skill tiers.

Must have been in the beta, I think. I was around at launch, but don’t remember skills not having tiers. Though the healing skills don’t have tiers. The first cost one skill point, but the rest cost 25 or so. Speaking of which, are those 25 SP skilsl worth it? I usually don’t bother switch out my initial healing skill. It gets the job done, and at level 27, it gets the job done quite nicely. It’s not… good, but it lets me survive more fights than not.

The 25sp heal skills were additions they put in I think about a year ago? They’re also a lot more specialized, and I believe aimed at veteran players who already had level 80s and a lot of skill points to burn. Some of them are nice for certain very specific things (like the engineer AED is used for doing some achievements or going through a specific bit in fractals) but you don’t need need them in 90% of cases.

On that topic, it sounds like you’re still using elixir H? I’d recommend giving healing turret a shot, it’s honestly one of the best heals in-game imo.

Some classes, such as thieves, change a lot as you progress through the traits, but engi is fairly consistent in it’s game play all the way though to 80. Weapon skills and utilities are all useful, if you have use for them. Flame thrower is nice, but often a more situational weapon imo. The only real downside is it’s hard to chase mobs around with it as it’s mostly a cone shaped short range aoe (net turret is a good choice to use with it). But you can use other kits along with it, such as grenades which is my fav kit when not blowing holes through mobs with a shotgun. There is a little trait cross-over between flame thrower and grenades. Downside with grenades though, lots of key mashing 1111234511112114114315111111111111112131111411115…. but if you play wvw it’s wonderful tower defense weapon.

But, big but, big changes coming for engi with HoT. So just experiment with it, but plan for it all to change in a few months for the engi, including new kits and weapons. I’d maybe pick up leather working, make some celestial armor (account bound) and just switch around traits/skills as needed. imo celestial works well for the engi.

jackaljag.8637:

On that topic, it sounds like you’re still using elixir H? I’d recommend giving healing turret a shot, it’s honestly one of the best heals in-game imo.

I’m using an elixir, yes. No idea what it’s called, as I don’t really pay attention to the healing stuff. I just stick to the default one. Is the healing turret one of those skills? If so, I’ll give it a shot. I don’t have access to it if it’s one of the “normal” skills, though. Meaning I have access to the rocket turret, net turret and those (if I get the skill points), but I don’t recall seeing a healing turret there

On a side note, I just got a new computer today, so I won’t be able to play GW2 until tomorrow to check out the healing turret. It needs to download over night.

Daywolf.2630:

Some classes, such as thieves, change a lot as you progress through the traits, but engi is fairly consistent in it’s game play all the way though to 80. Weapon skills and utilities are all useful, if you have use for them. Flame thrower is nice, but often a more situational weapon imo. The only real downside is it’s hard to chase mobs around with it as it’s mostly a cone shaped short range aoe (net turret is a good choice to use with it). But you can use other kits along with it, such as grenades which is my fav kit when not blowing holes through mobs with a shotgun. There is a little trait cross-over between flame thrower and grenades. Downside with grenades though, lots of key mashing 1111234511112114114315111111111111112131111411115…. but if you play wvw it’s wonderful tower defense weapon.

But, big but, big changes coming for engi with HoT. So just experiment with it, but plan for it all to change in a few months for the engi, including new kits and weapons. I’d maybe pick up leather working, make some celestial armor (account bound) and just switch around traits/skills as needed. imo celestial works well for the engi.

Here’s a fun thing: I’m a leftie, so pressing the right keys aren’t really an issue for me. I mean, I use the WASD-keys to move around with my right hand, and that makes the thumb rest nicely on the Ctrl-key. This again means I can easily reach the 1 – 5 keys both with and without pressing Ctrl and/or Shift. How you right-handed people do that is beyond me. Seriously, I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. The only thing that might work is using the pinky on the Ctrl-button, but that’s just awkward.

Anyway, I have a low-level asura thief, as I absolutely love the Shadow Assassin outfit. I hate it on every other race, but it’s really cool on asura. And thief is one of the classes I’ve played the least, so I’m thinking about making that one of the top three mains (along with mesmer and engineer.) But it’s only level 6 so far, so it’s too early too tell. Though I’m tempted to use a few tomes of insta-level to skip the boring low levels. We’ll see. Tomorrow, once the game is downloaded. Sigh…

Healing turret isn’t one of the default but can be bought for 3 skill points, it’s in the uppermost line when looking at skills from the hero panel! Just figured I’d mention it

ctrl? I have ground targeting off and all that, so it just snaps and follows the cursor. I just do my best to keep the cursor in center screen and then often run while I’m chucking grenades at wherever the center of the screen is. Like it or not, I’ve had everything set up and key mapped for my thief since launch, but works well enough with my engi which is my second fav char.

Anyway, seems the best way to explain the way skills and traits progress, ever play a skill based sandbox mmo? Well actually they brought quite a few devs in early on that worked on a few of the old popular sandbox mmo’s. You really see that bleed through in some parts of gw2, such as with skills and traits. So it’s really just about availability rather than progression.

I started with an Engi as my Main, and when I stopped using Turrets in favor of kits, I got so much better. I got even more better when I worked out a style that rotated my kits while skills were on cool down. I know that was not what you post was about, but it’s can’t hurt to throw that in.