Engi or Ranger??? PVP
For sPVP and tPVP: How much time do you want to invest in learning the class? Engineers have a high skill cap and can be very effective in this meta if you learn to play them at a high level. You will most likely not be very good for quite some time. Rangers have a lower skill cap and you will most likely be effective from the get go. Both are very viable options in the current meta.
Ranger skill cap is quite low, IF and ONLY IF, you use condition bunker builds. Such as Spirit Ranger, BM Apoth Bunker.
Any other build, and especially power builds, require massive amounts of skills and tactics to even remotely stand on even ground with the other professions.
Engineer is tricky, and i admit, that it didnt suit my style, so i gave up before i even got any good with it.
As for WvW, Engineer and Ranger are both good roamers. I would say Rangers have a tendency to be more versatile and tanky then the engineers when focused, but they are both good choices.
For zerging, Rangers hands down. They have a lot more sustain on the frontlines, and PVT/full zerker is more then adequate to thrive, even among the hammer warriors running up front. Engineer in WvW suits small man team/roaming very well, zergs, not so much. They still perform, but they usually have to stay behind to avoid being blown to pieces.
Currently @ some T1 server in EU
Ranger will seem stronger in 1 v 1 at first because you will have a pet helping you kill things and the majority of players won’t dodge anything the pet does. On the flip side, if you want to become very good at ranger YOU HAVE to learn to recognize what your pet does in the middle of a fight and be able to control it with F1 (attack target) and F3 (return) to be able to coordinate skill spikes. As for engi, you won’t be as good with 1 v 1 at first when compared to a ranger but engis have much better team fight presence because almost all their skills are aoe. Later on though, if you can’t micromanage your pet you will be better off with engi especially with all that aoe. The game has been out for a year and people will still get owned by bomb engis on point because they refuse to step out of the node for a second. Finally, engis require better positioning than rangers because of the classes defensive capabilities. Ranger has a lot of escapes and evades built into the weapon sets while engi is pretty immobile unless specced properly so less mistakes can be made. That is the trade off in the end, engi = more damage less survivability, while ranger is less damage but high survivability. Hope that helps.
Am I good?… I’m good.