Guild Wars 2

I have been reading a lot of threads lately about how difficult it is to play the Engineer. I’ve done some analysis and kind of figured out why and would like offer you guys the way I play the Engineer and how I found it to be more enjoyable again! First the analysis as to why there is so much backlash against this profession.

We have the ability to use more abilities in a single spec than any other profession in the game.

Let that marinate in your head for a while. An engineer with any weapon set, three kits as their utility, four toolbelt skills, and a Elixir X has exactly 29 (34) different abilities they can use at any given time. You have five weapon skills, five skills per kit (15), 4 toolbelt skills, and elixir x gives you five new abilites (10 if you count both forms which is why I put 34 in paranthesis). Let’s contrast that with a Warrior who has at most 17 different skills they can use at one time. 10 skills across two weapon sets, 2 different “burst” abilites (they change when you weapon swap), a heal, three utility skills, and an elite. The human brain at most can think of about 4 to 5 things at once. I am sure a genius could think about more, maybe 6 or 7, or maybe even a SC2 pro-gamer could attain such a level of micromanagement at their particular skill that it would seem like they are going above and beyond that threshold, however I am not a genius, and I am certainly no pro-gamer. I want to have fun! Like most of you I was overwhelmed with the Engineer and almost gave up until I decided to go back to basics and come up with a play style that was simple yet effective! So, without any more exposition I present to you my solution.

Do not use any weapon kits!

Take them out of the equation. Right now they are bugged and won’t even auto-attack when swapped unless you ctrl-click the first ability every time! They don’t work with many sigils that grant benefits on swapping, they don’t carry over any of the stats of your equipped weapon (why even have them in the first place ;/), a lot of their abilities are not working as intended (ever try to kill a burrow with a flamethrower?) and are all in all clunky to work with. So now that we’ve removed them let’s see what we have to work with.

Five weapon skills, four utility skills (including healing), four toolbelt skills, and an elite skill of your choice. We are now at 14 different skills, three shy of a Warrior. Much easier to wrap your head around right?

Upon realizing this I decided to come up with a fun build that would strengthen the weapon of choice I was using as well as being fun and interesting. I decided to go double pistols with elixirs.

Before you say, “oh that’s already been discussed,” stop. I read those threads and they didn’t offer much advice. Just a link to a build and maybe a video. I wanted to offer more!

First you need two pistols. The skills you get with two pistols compliment this fast paced play style more so than the rifle or the pistol/shield combo. Let’s go over the abilities and see what they have to offer and when to use them.

Explosive Shot - While this ability may seem weak in comparison to other first slot attacks it offers a lot of hidden damage that most people neglect. First off every shot deals AOE damage. Second, every shot applies a bleed. Third, and this is the hidden part, its damaged is almost doubled against a clumped up group when you have the trait Coated Bullets. Basically it works like this, two enemies next to eachother, you fire explosive shot, the explosive shot pierces to the next one and explodes again! Double damage. The bleed doesn’t transfer unfortunately, but that is a minor nuisance.

Poison Dart Volley - Another ability that people find hard to use forcing them to neglect it entirely. Big mistake! This can potentially deliver some of the highest burst damage in your arsenal. The problem with the skill is that the volley spreads in a strange cone, making it so that only two or three of the five darts actually hit the enemy. How do we solve this? Simple. How does a cone usually work? Narrow at the start, wide at the finish. What does that mean? It means this ability, while it has the range, should be used as a close range shot! Kind of like a shotgun. When you get right up in the enemies face and use this skill all five shots WILL hit the target. Couple this with a high crit chance, and the Elixir U and you will do some really nice burst damage and gift your enemy with a nice five stacks of poison. I’ve had all five shots crit before and the damage is awesome indeed.

Static Shot - This shot is, in my opinion, one of the best skills in the game. It blinds, it confuses, and it bounces! It’s damage might be mediocre but its utility is almost unrivaled. No need to aim this sucker either. Just fire it before someone is about to hit you and enjoy the chaos!

Blowtorch - Ah yes, one of my favorite skills to use. A giant plume of flame that deals more damage the closer you are to the target. But why would we want to get close? Simple, you are going to be using Poison Dart Volley up close anyway, why not couple it with this sucker. The physical damage is decent, but the burn damage is what puts on the serious hurt.

Glue Shot - Doesn’t do any damage, but makes up for it for the fact that it’s an AOE IMMOBILIZE AND CRIPPLE AT RANGE! I can’t begin to illustrate how many times this ability saved my hide.

Now, let’s move on to the utility skills.

Elixir H - I take Elixir H as my heal skill because I grab the cooldown reduction on Elixirs, make this a heal with a 20 second cooldown. The random buff is useful, but unfortunately, the buff is random. I know that sounded redundant but it’s true. You can’t rely on the buff. Just think of it as a little present given to you for healing. With this build you will also get 20 seconds of might whenever you use it thanks to HGH, more on that later. It’s toolbelt skill has the same unfortunate random properties as its base. I throw the elixir occasionally but I try not to stress out about it too much as it is not a part of my rotation and its benefits won’t “save” you or your team unless you can modify the game to have it grant you the boon you want every time.

Utility Goggles - I’ve been running goggles as my stun break instead of Elixir U because the cooldown is still lower even if you are traited with the Elixir CD reduction (which you will be). It also gives you fury, which ups your crit chance by a large amount. It’s toolbelt skill is very deceptive. It instantly puts 10 stacks of Vulnerability on your target. This is basically a 10 percent damage increase while it is up. 10 percent across all of your abilities. Way better than Elixir U which gives you stability or stealth and never the one you want at the time thanks to Murphy’s law.

Elixir B - Wow! An Elixir that doesn’t have completely random properties! Call the president of Arena Net, I think this was an oversight. What this little potion does is grant you four boons, Fury, Might, Retaliation and Swiftness. The might it grants stacks with HGH, giving you two stacks of Might every time you quaff this sucker. The fury stacks with utility belts fury, giving you an increase in duration to the crit percentage. The swiftness gives you move speed, which helps you kite, escape, travel, it makes you move fast OK! I never notice the Retaliation buff, but it does work, and reflects damage back to the attacker. Its toolbelt equivalent is surprisingly useful for your team if you can hit three to four people. That’s three to four people with move speed, damage reflection, might, and an increase to their crit chance. Pretty nice buff huh?

Elixir U - Very very confusing tooltip. It does not give you a random professions buff, it gives you one of three debuffs. Either it makes it so you can’t receive heals (Zephyr), removes endurance and stops it from regenerating (haste) or makes you take 50 percent more damage (Frenzy). WTF BBQ! Why would I take this crap! Well, it also gives you the best effects in the game: Quickness. If you don’t know what Quickness is it’s probably best to experience it for yourself. Slot Elixir U, run up to an enemy, drink it, activate Poison Dart Volley. You will be astonished at how awesome the ability is after doing this simple test. The debuff lasts for five seconds and it’s up to you to decide when to take the risk. Personally, I like using it at the very start of a combo before kiting away and waiting for the debuff to wear off. I run up to someone, pop this sucker, use static shot to blind em, poison dart volley (which fires all shots in a split second thanks to the buff), blowtorch, glue gun and either roll away if I didn’t get the endurance debuff or run away if I did. Its toolbelt skill is basically a random effect. All you need to know is that you have TWO chances to grant protection from projectiles (wall of reflection or smoke screen) and ONE chance to grant stealth. It’s a defensive ability when thrown and even though the effect is random, it CAN save a group from a wipe.

Supply Crate – One could write a whole article on this abilities uses, but I’ll keep it simple, it pretty much does everything. It’s an AoE stun, it’s extra damage, it has extra CC in the form of the net turret (if your lucky it doesn’t always drop!), it drops healing bandages, it drops bandages that give you buffs, it’s just awesome in general. Elixir X is decent, but more often than not I’ll get the Juggernaut form when I want to CC a whole bunch of people and the Whirlwind form when I want to CC one person. In other words, random. I’ve used the Mortar occasionally in certain dungeons and it actually is quite useful, but I find the Supply Crate is versatile in all situations and is incredibly strong.

Traits
Now for the build. It’s actually quite simple, and benefits all of your skills in some way or another.

Explosives - 10 Points. This gives you two key abilities. Evasive Powder Keg and Incendiary Ammo. The ammo is self-explanatory. It’s basically extra damage in the form of a burn whenever you crit. It works on a 1/3rd of your crits. Treat it as free damage for merely attacking whatever it is your attacking. The other ability, Evasive Powder Keg, needs a little more explanation. It drops a bomb at your location whenever you roll. This passive has a lot of uses. In PvE enemies WILL target the powder keg before it explodes. This is AWESOME for kiting. I kited a champion for 10 minutes and killed it solo thanks to this skill, glue gun, and swiftness from elixir b. It was a lot of fun actually. The best part was a guardian sauntered in right before it died and was in total shock at seeing a lone engineer and a dead champion. He was definitely pretty impressed, especially since I was an engineer and we are generally seen as weak. It’s also, and yes I’m going to use the phrase again, free damage. You are going to roll in pvp or pve anyway, why not get some free damage to go along with that evade. As an aside, 10 points in Explosives gives you 100 power and 10 percent increased condition time, which usually equates to about 3/4th of a second or so.

Firearms - 30 Points. Since we get 30 points in this trait line I’ll break it down in three sections, one for every 10 points.

Sharpshooter and either Rifled Barrels or Precise Sights - It’s really your preference here as to whether or not you want increased range or a chance to apply vulnerability on crit. I usually go with the increased range, but it does not hurt to take Precise Sights as you are going to be up close and personal every now and then. I find the 10 stacks I get with utility goggles more than enough for that nice bit of burst damage, but if you are in a long drawn out fight that doesn’t require much movement then go ahead and take Precise Sights. The other skill, Sharpshooter, is what makes it so we only have to take one Sigil of Earth to get an almost 100 percent chance to apply a bleed on our crits.

Target the Weak and Hair Trigger - Target the Weak gives us 10 percent crit against enemies below 50 percent. Couple this with the Fury boon you get from either goggles or elixir b and you’ll be sitting at a VERY high crit rate. WIth your crit rate so high you will be applying burning, bleeding, and vulnerability(if you traited for it) all the time. Hair Trigger reduces the cooldown on all of your pistol shots and must be taken no questions asked. There is nothing better than firing off your Poison Dart Volley, Blowtorch, and Static Charge more often. Oh and it reduces the cooldown on your AOE ROOT AND SNARE as well. Caps for emphasis.

Target the Maimed and Coated Bullets - Target the Maimed deals increased damage to targets that are bleeding. Who makes targets bleed? Oh yeah, we do, all thekittentime with almost 100 percent uptime. Coated Bullets is just awesome. Want to double the damage on your Explosive Shot? Want to hit a group of enemies with your poison dart volley? Want to wreck events like nobody else pressing only two buttons? There ya have it. Coated Bullets.

Alchemy - 30 points. Once again I’ll break it down into three sections.

Hidden Flask and Fast Acting Elixirs - Hidden Flask is basically a free Elixir B at 75 percent health. I never notice it because I tend to favor a more controlled approach. In other words, I’m not gonna head into a fight with the mindset of, “ok I need to get to 75 percent HP so I can get this free buff!” It’s a passive, it’s a free buff, it occurs, there’s no strategy other than that. Fast Acting Elixirs on the other hand is EXTREMELY powerful. It makes it so your heal is on a 20 second cooldown. It reduces the cooldown of Elixir B and Elixir U giving you more chances to use them and a higher uptime on your buffs. I haven’t tested it with Elixir X but I’m not too sure if it works. Oh well, I never use Elixir X anyway.

Transmute and Potent Elixirs - Ok, Transmute. Does this even work? 3 percent, really? I’ve never even seen it work once. I could care less though because Potent Elixirs increases the duration of all of our buffs from Elixirs and when coupled with the 30 percent increase in boon duration thanks to the 30 points in Alchemy we have almost a 100 percent uptime on all of our buffs. Right now it does not work with Quickness, because for some lame reason Quickness is an “effect” and not a “boon.” But in my opinion it should because you are getting the Quickness “effect” from akittenElixir! Then again, knowing arena net if it was changed it would also “buff” the duration of the negative effects too, and I don’t know if I could live through 10 seconds of no healing or endurance.

Energy Conversion Matrix and either HGH or Automated Response - Energy Conversion Matrix is simple. 1 percent extra damage per each boon on you. Think about that for a second. Elixir B gives you four boons. That’s four percent extra damage. Stack that with Target the Maimed which gives you 5 percent increased damage to bleeding foes and your looking at 9 percent increased damage. Stack that again with goggles and your looking at 19 percent increased damage. At the press of two buttons you can deal almost 20 percent extra damage to the enemy with all of your skills. Awesome huh? Now for the discussion regarding HGH or Automated Response. HGH works with Elixir H. It also works with Elixir B and U. It’s a great skill and helps you get those might stacks up. Automated Response is more defensive in nature, but it also has a chance at failing. I hear a lot of complaints that it may or may not work with conditions already applied, which greatly weakens this ability. None the less, it’s a decent skill and can save your life. I run HGH 90 percent of the time though so I’m no expert on Automated Response.

Armor - I’m no expert here. I run Condition Damage, Crit, Power in that priority. If someone wants to chime in, I’m all ears.

How to play - Let me make this clear, I PvE most of the time. I don’t PvP a lot, and when I do it’s world vs world so I can stick to the back and deal damage. I don’t run with a coordinated group in PvP either, and I’m sure this build will get WRECKED in coordinated pvp because of how squishy it is. What this build does do is it simplifies the PvE experience and is incredibly effective at what it does, which is supplying damage through conditions and crits and buffs and effects through your thrown elixirs.

General Rotation - Start with explosive shot of course to activate your auto. If you are not the current target, go ahead and activate your buffs/debuffs in this order: Goggles, Elixir B, Analyze. After analyzing the enemy quickly run up and activate Elixir U. Use Poison Dart Volley and Blowtorch and more autoattacks if the enemy is still not targeting you. If the enemy does turn to target you fire off a static shot and a glue shot. Back off and wait for your cooldowns to come back up. It’s ok to fire a poison dart volley from range, but if you have both Blowtorch and Poison Dart Volley up it’s best to get close and quickly use the two skills.

If things get hairy for you or your team find the ally with the lowest amount of hp and throw Elixir U at them. A lot of times people with low hp run around like maniacs. Hopefully the Elixir U effect you get is stealth, because usually people who are invisible calm down for a moment. When they calm down throw an Elixir H at there feet. Hopefully you just saved there life. If things get REALLY intense drop a Supply Turret. Inform your group that those little grey boxes on the ground are hp. Always try to hit as many people as possible with your thrown Elixir B (it really is a great buff).

Try and hit groups with your glue shot for maximum effectiveness. Save your static shot its blind and confusion. It’s more UTILITY than DAMAGE. Always try and use your blowtorch and poison dart volley on cooldown. Always try and evade roll if you are the one pulling to try and get a little extra damage with the powder keg. You have a lot of uses, use them all!

I recommend this build if you are feeling frustrated with your engineer and find it too difficult to operate. I am having so much fun right now and feeling less stressed overall. I can go full lazy mode during wave events and get gold by staying at range and pressing two buttons. I travel places quickly with swiftness up almost all the time. I love all the conditions I apply (burning, poison, bleed, confusion). Right now I am running a sigil that chills on crit (I forget the name) and it’s really useful. I’ve also run the AOE explosion sigil, and that is a blast as well, no pun intended. I hope this helped some of the struggling engineers out there. Why wait for Arena Net to fix our broken kits when you can have fun now! Don’t struggle through bugs, work around them! Yes, one day our kits will be fixed, but they have stated they are broken because of base code. What that means is that the auto-attack on our kits will be fixed in 2014. On that day I will happily swap out my goggles for an elixir gun and stack 10 bleeds on someone in a second with Elixir U. But until that day arrives, it’s potion guzzling mechanic all the way.

Happy Shooting.

Ignore all the felluhs that say use strictly pistol/pistol or rifle only. I use pistol/shield wreck ape shiz in tournaments. These scrubs have no idea how to utilize the skills of a engineer. Most of them, are thinking DPS first and DPS last, not the way to go. That being said, I believe Engineer has the most versatility in their builds. You can literally make your skill set and still be very efficient long as you know how to play the class. Lastly, the reason I personally use Pistol/Shield is cause shield adds more survivability for me against rangers and thief’s. It’s second ability on the reflect move is a knock back. Perfect for messing up thief’s initiating combos or HB warriors etc. Then, what’s great about it as well since it’s a knockback. This skill interrupts heals and stomps. Where if your using pistol offhand your only thinking about the dps your pumping about no help whatsoever to allies in need of help desperately. Now, the second skill of the shield, my personal fave. It’s blocks your closet targets gets stunned for 2 seconds. Another great way to deal with pesky classes that catch you off guard. Then, once again there’s a second skill on it as well. You daze your opponent, if you can position it right, you’re able to get them back to back. Amazing for stopping heals and interrupts as well. These two skills are BIG CHANGERS IN FIGHTS 1v1. I mean HUGE.

Hey Tarzan, I have to agree with a lot of what you said. At the end of my post I mentioned how I PvE 90 percent of the time, and I really enjoy the DPS that pistol/pistol brings to a group as well as the nice uptime on the group buff elixir b.

Eventually after a month or so I think I’ll try to focus on more PvP but right now I want to complete all dungeon paths first. When I switch to PvP i have to say that Pistol/Shield looks really enticing with 30 in inventions, 30 in alchemy, and 10 in tools for speedy gadgets maybe.

Haha! Now you post this! Don’t you know how much trouble I’ve had with the engineer? :p
I’ve been posting here on the forums on how much I struggled killing things no matter how much I tried, no matter how I changed my skill, traits, or equipment.

Last night I was playing as usual, not being able kill anything when I solo, so of-course, eventually I would die because the enemies kept re-spawning before I could kill them all.
I was really frustrated and almost giving up, when I decided to tweak skills for one last time. Jackpot!

I literally just posted this on my guild’s forum a couple hours ago:

I now have a build that can actually kill stuff! Not only that, I can actually solo a lot of Risen in Malchor’s Leap and Straits of Desolation, and kill them all quickly without help. Not bad, considering that since Lv 55 or so I could barely kill anything no matter how much I tried :)

So this is what I have:
http://is.gd/EMjtk8 (this shortened link goes to gw2skills.net skill editor)
I’m mostly specced for precision and condition damage, but with the trait “Static Discharge”, I made sure to use low-recharge tool-belt skills. But I’m using Wrench, Rocket boots, and Net turret at the moment.

Static Discharge
Discharge a bolt of lightning whenever you use a tool belt skill.

• The lightning bolt bounces up to three times.
• No cooldown
  Also I have a trait to recharge tool-belt skills if my health gets to 25%, tough it rarely does unless I’m fighting a veteran too.

The way I generally use this build:

• Aggro a bunch of zombies, Glue Shot.
• Attack for a bit.
• Static Shot for blind, Rocket kick to get close, pistol’s Blowtorch (note: now I will also use the poison volley thanks to your tip, OP)
• Net turret’s tool-belt skill has a low cooldown too, but lets me use Static Discharge twice. Use tool-belt skill, set turret, overcharge turret, detonate turret
  Sometimes I use the Net to immobile melee zombies out of range from me, so I can kill the ranged first without having to kite.
• Med Kit is mostly used for speed boost and Fury.

But overall, I try to use the tool-belt skills as much as possible.
Throw wrench is a combo finisher and does great damage, it also has quick cooldown so I bring it. I don’t use the kit itself, unless I need some of its skills in a pinch (cripple and gear shield come to mind)

This build could use a offense combo-field of some sort, but I don’t know what… Grenade’s tool belt skill fits well with the build, but only has poison combo field. Elixir U has nice combo fields, but it’s a 60 second cooldown.
Maybe I’ll use Elixir U for the combo walls and quickness.

My attributes are a bit different than yours since I’m focusing on Static Discharge, but I’ll definitely look into using elixirs for the extra damage per boon.

Decklan.7540:

Hey Tarzan, I have to agree with a lot of what you said. At the end of my post I mentioned how I PvE 90 percent of the time, and I really enjoy the DPS that pistol/pistol brings to a group as well as the nice uptime on the group buff elixir b.

Eventually after a month or so I think I’ll try to focus on more PvP but right now I want to complete all dungeon paths first. When I switch to PvP i have to say that Pistol/Shield looks really enticing with 30 in inventions, 30 in alchemy, and 10 in tools for speedy gadgets maybe.

Right on, PVE is great for engineer a bit of everything so never a dull moment. However, when it comes to PVP this is where the class shines in its fun factor and play. I use 10 20 10 30.

I actually have this exact build at the moment. I didn’t intend to, I was just screwing around to see how high I could stack my might by using Juggernaut, and then changed the major traits to this.

The class is fine pvp although there are more crap stuffs than my Guardian.

it really depends on player’s IQ. in the game that u can adjust a lot of stuffs like build , gear stats w/e.
To be really good, u need to think how you choose stats of gears to match with your build your game play style.

no cc, no cleaning formula, nothing about runes for condition duration or napalm specialist (for a total of 50% increased bleed and burn duration). in short this build is bad…

CptCosmic.3156:

no cc, no cleaning formula, nothing about runes for condition duration or napalm specialist (for a total of 50% increased bleed and burn duration). in short this build is bad…

He said he does mostly pve and some wvw where he stays back. He is trying to help some of us still learning the class and the traits for it. Thank you original poster, gonna give this a try.

For solo runs at lower level, p/p can be a stable dps build. But the shield brings so much more dynamic to the class that many engineers overlooked.
shield #4 is a projectile reflect as well as a blast finisher that can push enemies away. See a ranged mob, use 4. A melee mob at close range, use 4. Want some extra heals, use healing mist + 4, (or generally 4 on any water field). Want some extra AOE mights, use fire field from flamethrower +4.
You get so much dynamic from one single skill alone.

And shield 5 blocks all attacks ranged and melee for its duration, with a 2 hit daze to boot.

But again, I’d only recommend running with shield only when you got a feel of how an Engineer works.

I need to add one thing. How can anyone not getting perma-swiftness boon via 10 points in Tools for Speedy Kits. But since yours is a starter guide for Engineer wannabes that doesn’t use any kits, understandable. But its something new players might wanna keep an eye out for once you get a feel of your Engineer.

Happy playing

Elixir B toolbelt only gives ONE of those buffs, it says it gives all, but it lies. Also, the Might boon lasts 10 seconds when applied with toolbelt skill instead of the 30 it says. Not half as useful as you think. Elixir U is nice, but the debuff is insane. The three classes that the debuffs are taken from at least KNOW what dbuff they get every time, you don’t and that makes it worth less than their versions. A 66% chance to stop incoming ranged attacks, 33% chance for something useless on toolbelt is not good. Elixir H having a 20 sec CD means little when you could run Healing Turret and simply pick it up right after it gives you Regen.

When you pick it up anytime after the first mist starts it has a 14 sec CD and it gave you Regen on top of healing for around the same amount as Elixir H. Plus it’s toolbelt is actually useful both as an AoE Regen and as a combo field. Goggles are nice and P/P is alright, Supply Crate is best Elite hands down. I honestly don’t like the idea of not running a kit at all, it might just be me, but EVERY other class is able to switch out in the middle of combat getting all new skills with new CD’s and new abilities. Whether it be weapons or elements or whatever, if you don’t run a kit at all, you lose a LOT of damage and versatility potential to every other class.

I tend to run Elixir Gun because I’m Condition Damage spec with a slight support bent. Power/Crit would work GREAT with Flamethrower, in fact your build would work great with it. You get close to burst anyway, why not switch to Flamrethrower right after and knock them back or blind them again with 5 and unload a bunch of crits with your 1? I think it might work for you without adding too much complexity to your build. in this case, I’d suggest removing Elixir U for it. Before you call me blasphemous, remember that the debuff is random and difficult to prepare for, the effect lasts for 5 seconds with a high CD, and the toolbelt is near worthless. With the Flamethrower you get 3 decent/good skills on the kit, a good albeit high CD Burn on toolbelt, and have more versatility with higher damage output over a 10-15 second period. You might want to change your Traits around if you slot the kit, more Explosives or drop Alchemy for something else would be my suggestion there. If you have time, just drop over to the mists and try it out on some Golems, check the rotation and damage and decide if you like it or not. Just my thoughts. Have a nice day!

I kinda disagree with the “not using weapon kits” mentality. I’m finding my Grenade Kit to be literally insane in both PvE and PvP, provided you can use it right (I recommend enabling Fast Ground Targeting and using either a Razer Naga or Logitech G600). Right now I’m running dual pistols, Elixir H, Elixir U, Elixir B or Flamethrower (primarily for the Incendiary Ammo toolkit ability and close-range combat), Grenade Kit, and Supply Crate. If I could remember all my traits, I’d post them here. As far as gear is concerned, I’m trying to find a sweet spot for Power, Precision, Condition Damage, and Crit Damage. If anyone has some raw numbers detailing how (or if) diminishing returns works in GW2, I’d be happy to see it.

I can’t vouch too much for PvP, but in PvE my typical strategy is to pop Incendiary Ammo, and toss out Poison and Shrapnel Grenades. That’s three conditions in two tosses. Afterwards, I pop Elixir U and regular Grenades + Grenade Barrage for some seriously massive damage in a very short period of time. CC consists of Freeze Grenades and Glue Shot (off-hand pistol), plus Flash Grenades and Static Shot for blind/confusion effects. If targets get too close, I whip out the Flamethrower to finish them off.

The biggest downside is due to the travel time on your Grenades. You’ve got to be an exceptional target-leader, and really learn the range of your abilities well (particularly with Fast Ground Targeting, as you no longer have a targeting retical to help you). Once you’ve got that down, however, you’ll tear through your enemies like there is no tomorrow.

Yeah, it seem like a lot to manage, but I am of the impression that if you truly learn your class, it’ll start coming as second nature. Just play smart, learn the class, and you’ll do well. No need to dumb down your Engineer by refusing to use some of his or her best mechanics, imo.

Decklan.7540:

Hey Tarzan, I have to agree with a lot of what you said. At the end of my post I mentioned how I PvE 90 percent of the time, and I really enjoy the DPS that pistol/pistol brings to a group as well as the nice uptime on the group buff elixir b.

Eventually after a month or so I think I’ll try to focus on more PvP but right now I want to complete all dungeon paths first. When I switch to PvP i have to say that Pistol/Shield looks really enticing with 30 in inventions, 30 in alchemy, and 10 in tools for speedy gadgets maybe.

Recalling my sPVP last night. I just joined a random game, ran out and saw one of my teammates downned on the ground with 2 guys stomping on him. Immediately rushed to them and blast both away with shield 4. Pumped on one guy, while another guy retry to stomp my downed mate. shield 5 double daze on that stomping guy while continuing pumping on that extra guy. Bringing in my flamethrower #3 pushing them from a third stomp (yeah, they are kinda noob its obvious isn’t it) and finishing both off finally.
Point is the shield brings so much dynamic that the offhand pistol can’t match.

I wonder why noone takes Cleaning Formula 409… in my opinion thats more of a musthave then the 7% more dmg you get when youve stacked alot of might with HGH

Hey people, wake up, this thread is about PvE, not PvP, this thread is to help people who are having trouble with their engineer in PvE.

So no one gives a bunny about sPvP.

Matters.6024:

He said he does mostly pve and some wvw where he stays back. He is trying to help some of us still learning the class and the traits for it. Thank you original poster, gonna give this a try.

lorazcyk.8927:

Hey people, wake up, this thread is about PvE, not PvP, this thread is to help people who are having trouble with their engineer in PvE.

So no one gives a bunny about sPvP.

so because it is for pve it has to waste alot of potential? npcs and players in wvw dont do any condition damage? dont get close to you? dont try to shoot you? dont need damage to bring down?

if you dont have a way to remove conditions, control unpleasant stuff and waste alot of damage then it is simply a build that is not good.

if you want a good build, use this one: http://tinyurl.com/8pxmre5
maximum damage via 3s burn+3s bleed, has CC via shield & plenty of utility via elixirs.

No, I’m not going to waste points into condition removal since it’s extremely rare that I get conditions in PvE. If I thought I need it, I would take it. But I don’t need it.
So I’d rather use those points for damage.

And while the shield is a fantastic weapon, it wasn’t doing the job in solo gameplay in Lv 80 areas. Shield and rifle are my favorite, and pistol/pistol is really boring, but it’s performing much better for me.

I love to go to PvP to learn new tricks, but in the end, PvP and PvE are still different environments. So let’s stay on topic taking this into account.

you have not only provided the pointless answer I was expecting that repeats the same again, you also have not read anything that was said in this thread.

and regarding your build and “not wasting points” (rofl): you have place points into tools and also runed for power which does nothing for pistols. you also have spend 5 points in inventions and alchemy which on their own are pretty much wasted. please also tell me how it works out when you face a dynamic event boss throwing out AOE conditions that kill you in 3 seconds (in before you claim dynamic events is not pve hahaha). the lack of condition duration bonus is also a loss of 25% of your damage. you also have no way to block ranged projectiles.

Hey cosmic, I appreciate all your insight and it is actually very useful.

I should note that I do swap out cleaning formula for elixir duration in fights that drop heavy conditions, but that was not the point of this guide. This guide was to help people with their engineer they might be struggling with because of all the bugs, traits that don’t work, clunky kits, and pretty bad turrets.

As far as CC goes I do have an aoe root and snare on a pretty short cooldown, it’s not much but its something. I will try out your ideas with napalm specialist and those runes that end up giving more uptime on bleeds and burns, for now though I’m doing fine.

Also, about Elixir U. Yes it’s random but the 66 percent chance to block projectiles is more useful than you can think. If they get stealth instead its still fairly defensive and lets them escape and regroup. Basically what I’m saying is it has a 66 percent chance to do something awesome and a 33 percent chance to do something OK, but 100 percent of the time it will help your group.

IMO, having cc and condition remover is not just for PvP but for PvE also.

cleaning formula is a permanent part of my build, if you are running around orr you will notice that mobs can inflict conditions on you. they can cripple and immobilize you, and so on.

i like cleaning formula because it makes it easier to run around orr, if i go from point A to point B and there is 5+ mobs in between, it would be not much of a problem.

We have the ability to use more abilities in a single spec than any other profession in the game.

Nope. An elementalist carrying 3 conjure skills will have 36 skills not counting the elite. An engineer has at best 27 skills excluding the elite, as 3 of the 5 from the healing kit are duplicates.

An elementalist can take a form as their elite, pumping their total number to 41.

“You don’t get conditions in PvE” is simply untrue. You don’t get conditions, or conditions harmful enough to bother with, when you farm selected mobs, but PvE in general you do need condition removal, unless you’re lucky with group comp and players.

Already at your first instance you will get deadly conditions that you HAVE TO get rid of if you want any hope to survive (IE: non cheesed twins in AC), unless you’re very, very skilled and selectively grouped, more skilled than this build and your first instance normally would warrant, for sure.

I appreciate the effort and the sharing, it’s a big write up and must have taken time, but I have to agree with those saying it’s rubbish.
If you literally want to turret things from the distance without moving, then re-roll a ranger. An engi without kits is absolutely pointless IMO. It’s not a good, simple introduction to the class, it’s just a waste of a character slot when you could have a lot more fun with an ele or ranger if you want a narrow selection of ranged skills to be effective.

Or if you want non-overwhelming, high dps, simple to play spec just go for a self-buffing grenade spam, for farming trash (which is all that is entailed if we state condition removal is irrelevant), it’s going to be a lot more effective than kit-less P/P.

Currently using this build:
http://is.gd/KhhZWN

I play this as melee build mostly, even if pistols are ranged.
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CptCosmic.3156:

you also have not read anything that was said in this thread.

I’ve read the posts carefully (when people are speaking to me). Or you think I’m the OP? I’m not him

you have place points into tools and also runed for power which does nothing for pistols

I put them there because I felt it was necessary, I try to buy decent armor and weapons whenever possible, but I don’t have the best accessories, yet, only mid-level accessories from karma vendors. I’m saving up money and materials to get a guildie to craft accessories and runes for me, but it’s expensive so it will take a long time.

If you’ve seen my several posts on this forum asking for help (after I spent days and days trying to get better in vain), you’d know I was so weak in terms of damage I couldn’t kill anything. So whether 10 points in power is appropriate for dual pistols or not, I don’t care, I have them there because it felt necessary to kill stuff. If I took them off, I can’t kill stuff.

you also have spend 5 points in inventions and alchemy which on their own are pretty much wasted.

They seem to do the job and I didn’t feel like I needed those points elsewhere, if I feel I need to use those points somewhere else, don’t worry, I will definitely change it right away.

please also tell me how it works out when you face a dynamic event boss throwing out AOE conditions that kill you in 3 seconds

I’ve been playing Straits and Desolation and Malchor’s Leap (I think that’s what it’s calledd), there are not many people playing on my server and I’m often alone or with one other random person or two.
I seem to survive OK. I never had any problem with surviving, even when I couldn’t kill stuff (before this build), I still had no trouble surviving.
You’re talking about events bosses like the Dwayna statue in Malchor’s Leap, right? Because I can solo veterans and champions with my build. Doing those shrine battles in that area, I didn’t die once.

(in before you claim dynamic events is not pve hahaha)

Why would someone say that? O_o How are they not PvE? Of-course they are. Not sure why you’d think I would say that. I love dynamic events and go out of my way to trigger them

the lack of condition duration bonus

I hadn’t thought about it because they just die so fast, extending durations would be wasted in this case. I like to extend burning though. As you can see on my power trait.
But wait.. didn’t you just say power (where condition duration is at) is useless on dual pistols?! :-O (See I do read posts carefully)

is also a loss of 25% of your damage. you also have no way to block ranged projectiles.

I don’t need to, I kill them before they even get a couple projectiles through me! :P However I enjoy elixir U so I could use that tool-belt skill if I felt the need for it.

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“You don’t get conditions in PvE” is simply untrue

I never said that, I’m well aware you get hit with conditions in PvE (cripple, I’m looking at you), I said that to me personally, it’s not worth it to bring condition removal because conditions are not causing me any problems. If they do start causing me problems, I will surely not hesitate to bring condition removal. (I’m generally playing solo or with one or two other players, but 80% of the time it’s solo.

I think you two have mistaken me for the OP. I’m not him, everyone please stop talking like I’m the one who made the build in the first post :P I’m not.

I thought the OP was nice trying to help, so I decided to share my build too. I shared my build that made it so I could solo stuff extremely easy, when before I could barely kill one enemy without help no matter how much I tried. It was so miraculous for me that I nearly cried tears of joy… I went around to really difficult areas to test how well the build worked, and was just laughing and dancing on my seat because I was so happy I could solo it!

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Again…
Currently using this build:
http://is.gd/KhhZWN
I play this as melee build mostly, even if pistols are ranged.
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I love it and it’s working well for me, everyone else can do whatever they want because it’s your right to

When it comes to PvE, I can’t do without bombs.
I mean lets take any PvE zerg out there, the bomb kit is simply awesome. I can’t do that much widespread damage with pistols. NOT.A.CHANCE.
But OK zergs can be rare. Training mobs – bombs are great for that. In fact, I’m lvl50, so far I haven’t encountered a mob pack I couldn’t take on by training them and blowing them up one by one (or as a group, it’s situational I guess :-))) ) In PvE I rarely die, it takes an OP boss that one-shots me, regular mobs in almost any quantities don’t stand a chance.
Am I exaggerating ? A little – the mob rangers still can be a pain in bigger numbers.

awsome guide, i noticed as in got to higher lvls that my turret love did’nt pan out.
only do pve. so goan give your build a try