Guild Wars 2

I’ve only played Engie in PvP and the only elite skill that I’ve used, and the only elite skill I’ve ever seen any other Engies use is the Supply Drop.

The reason is that the Supply Drop is the most reliable skill.

The Elixir X has two powerful effects, with a 50/50 chance of getting either one. Now while I think random is generally good, it’s not good when it’s a huge effect over a small period of time. If you need one effect or another, you’re gambling on that 50/50 chance (not very good odds) of getting that effect. Consider if you were a Guardian, and instead of having the two elite book (tome of ????) skills you had one with a 50/50 chance of getting either one, I can’t imagine many people would use it, not because it’s not powerful, but because they can’t rely on it. I don’t use Elixir X because I can’t base my gameplay around a 50/50 chance with a huge cooldown.

The mortar is a weird skill to me and I haven’t really used it (but of course, I’ve never seen it be used either). I really don’t like the idea of being stuck in one spot and losing my other abilities while I’m doing so, I imagine it would nearly always be more effective to use my supply drop on my enemies and just use my normal abilites than to use the mortar.

Anyways, what do you guys think? Have you seen anybody use any elite skill besides the supply drop? Is this reasonable, is there maybe some great reason to use the Mortar and the Elixir X over the Supple Drop that I’m missing?

game is 2 weeks old. People don’t know what is best yet. Hopefully when the idiot engineer’s that use just rifle or just pistol and shield get bored of their lack of skill range people will then know what is best to use. If you go alchemy for example the elixer can benefit by giving a stack of might. Depends how you look at it.

I play an engineer 90% of the time in pvp. The main reason I prefer supply drop is its effectiveness in a tough 1v1 or 1v2 fight, as well as its ability to turn the tide in a group fight. The healing packs are great too!! A dual pistol turret engi with supply crate up is very very difficult to take down in a 1v1 fight.

You pretty much nailed the downs of each elite skill.

The mortar is “ok” in WvW if you’re into that, or for attacking/defending a control point if you manage to be sneaky and not get noticed.
Elixir X is way too random to be useful IMO.

The only skill that actually helps everyone in the group and is the most reliable, is the Supply Drop.

I just did a few rounds trying out the other Elite Skills

The Mortar I had a really hard time finding a spot to put it, usually the battle would just go somewhere else, or get too close to me where I was a sitting duck. Though this could be remedied with better knowledge/skill. But, even when I did find a good spot I didn’t really feel like I was doing anything (that I couldn’t be doing with my normal skills) except with the 5 skill (which was a blast to use). I might use the mortar in PvE and/or WvW.

The Elixir X I had bug out on me about half the time I used it, It was in the process of doing something and I got CCed and I got the full cool down with no effect. Every time that it did not bug out I got the juggernaught and I wasn’t very effective in each situation (mostly the whirlwind would have been more useful) and I either died or just was just feckless.

I think more research is necessary, but I’m not particularly impressed so far.

The only time I can gather the mortar being somewhat useful is in the Battle of Kylo map. Place the engineer on the treb with the mortar on his bar, and have him set it up on the edge of the treb area. Then you could hit down people before they come for you.

I tried using the mortar for mid fights in Foefire and besides having a slow travel time and long cool downs, the abilities seemed to do pretty minimal damage as well.

It isn’t the random aspect of elixir x that makes me stay away from it, its the fact that all the forms suck with I guess an exception for bunker engis.