Guild Wars 2

Just looking for a little feedback on a potential engineer build I worked up. It’s PvE focused, and relies almost entirely on the flamethrower.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fdQQFAUlUUpvrtdxWLseNSdBFydWQQGgCI6FGjhA-TBSAwA42fQpyPiq/Aw8nFlgPuAAEeAA10BAA-e

It seems like it might be a little overkill on the “tanky” stats, but I couldn’t figure out a good way to get decent mix of survival options and still maintain decent damage. I’m a bit concerned about almost non-existent critical chance, but just wanted some general feedback on it.

Well, I finally hit 80 on my engineer and so I’m trying out my build now. I swapped out the soldier’s trinkets for knight’s trinkets (and grabbed a berserker’s backpack from the guild armorer, since I haven’t finished the story yet), and so far it seems decent. Definitely not on par with the damage of my other characters (flamethrower seems to hit for a lot less than pretty much any other weapon I’ve used — is this normal?). I did find that the numbers on the build calculator are a tiny bit off. Without buffs I sit at around 1900 power, rather than 2100, but after swapping to flamethrower and building up bloodlust stacks, I do sit right around 2300-2400 power. The precision from the knight’s trinkets also gets me a bit over 30% crit chance, which seems a bit more useful than the 2000 or so health that I’m missing from not using soldier’s (apparently there’s no way to craft soldier’s trinkets without getting recipes from dungeons). I ran a bunch of large-scale events last night, and there were a few times that I was the only one still standing, and while I wasn’t always at 100% health, it took focus fire from groups of veterans and their minions to really burn me down — on the flip side, it took a lot longer to kill them than it does on, say, my guardian or warrior. Healing turret seems to be almost overpowered with this build (except in instances where there is a lot of AoE, as if I’m near it when the stacks of AoE attacks go off, it’s generally down in seconds) with the turret bringing me from 50% to 100% health if I drop it and activate the overcharge at the same time. Overall I’m relatively happy with the build, but would love to see if I could squeeze in some more damage, but I’m really at a loss as to how I could do that. If anyone has any feedback, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks!

Personally, I see very little benefit in the clerics gear since this is PvE. Your much better off going straight soldiers if you want that to be able to take a lot of damage. Personally, I feel if your desiring to focus on FT much, I would go with all carrion or rampager’s gear. This is just my personal opinion of Ft builds in which it is the only kit.

If you want to tank, run Zealot’s, it comes with the smallest DPS loss on a tank gearset.

@dancingmonkey

From a numbers point of view, that actually looks very good. Looking at a Soldiers (armor) with Knights (jewelry) combination, it maintains decent critical chance (thinking of swapping from bloodlust to fire sigil, since that seems like it would be a decent boost to the poor damage of FT #1, which an almost certain activation every other use) and seems to have considerably more HP (~3000) with a loss of 300 healing from the turret (though I’m thinking I may swap to med kit — more selfish with healing, but bandage is up as often as the turret toolbelt and it also comes with more burst healing) and ~30 healing lost on backpack regenerator, which I think I may swap for something more useful.

@guanglai

Looking at the numbers, is the loss of the extra toughness really worth the healing boost in this set up? I’m honestly not asking rhetorically, I’m pretty new to the engineer game, so I honestly don’t know.

Also, thank you both for your feedback. It’s helping a lot in deciding what to tweak.

igmolicious.5986:

@dancingmonkey

From a numbers point of view, that actually looks very good. Looking at a Soldiers (armor) with Knights (jewelry) combination, it maintains decent critical chance (thinking of swapping from bloodlust to fire sigil, since that seems like it would be a decent boost to the poor damage of FT #1, which an almost certain activation every other use) and seems to have considerably more HP (~3000) with a loss of 300 healing from the turret (though I’m thinking I may swap to med kit — more selfish with healing, but bandage is up as often as the turret toolbelt and it also comes with more burst healing) and ~30 healing lost on backpack regenerator, which I think I may swap for something more useful.

@guanglai

Looking at the numbers, is the loss of the extra toughness really worth the healing boost in this set up? I’m honestly not asking redundantly, I’m pretty new to the engineer game, so I honestly don’t know.

Also, thank you both for your feedback. It’s helping a lot in deciding what to tweak.

Engineer has very strong healing that benefits well from Healing Power. Zealot’s is also a straight-up better choice than Knights or Soldiers since:

1) Soldier’s does not give precision.
2) Knight’s only gives power as a minor stat.

Zealot’s gives you a tank stat, power as a major stat, and precision as a minor stat, making it the third-best DPS prefix overall and the best DPS prefix with a tank stat.

So last night I spent a bit of time crafting some new armor and bought what I didn’t have the materials to craft, and wound up with this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlsTpvrtdxWLseNSdBFydWQQGgCI6FGjhA-TxRBwARuAgSwU6Aot/AO1fSq8DwDAQh5PA-e

Pretty much the same, but swapped clerics for soldier’s and swapped out sigil of bloodlust for sigil of fire, and I have to say I’m incredibly pleased with the results. Not only did it feel like I was a lot harder to kill than with the heal-heavy build, the sigil of fire seems to have considerably higher damage potential than sigil of bloodlust, especially with the rapid attacks from FT1. I actually felt almost as effective as some of my other professions at killing things in Orr and in Dungeons. Healing turret’s drop in effectiveness did hit a little harder than I was expecting, but medkit seems to make up for it and then some (the low-cooldown bandage wounds is insane, but feels kind of greedy). I engaged a champion ravager (is that the one with the purple bubble and axe-pull?) with a group of 4 and was the only one standing through most of the fight, but managed to drag him away from others when they downed so they could rally, and it really seemed to perform well. When I can dredge up the money to try a Zealot’s build (I don’t have the recipes or sprocket node), I’ll give it a shot as well and see how it performs. Thank you again for your feedback — it’s been incredibly helpful!

So you’re only looking for a flamethrower build or something better?
Here’s something I made up with just pure flamethrower action
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdMQJAqelUUpWr9dxmKseNydBNqmA6+NhAI6C2iOD-TByDgAKPIgDlg7K/mOhAi6JiV/Rd/BAzfECY8GA-e
You’ve got a few survivability stats and good uptime on vigor which you’ll need without bombs and grenades blind spam.

As for the build you linked:
-Healing turret is almost always preferred over med kit in pve.
-Why go 20 points into inventions for 25% increased movement speed when you can go 10 points into tools for 33% move speed?
-invigorating speed/infused precision is a good combo for vigor uptime (twice as many dodges = more survivability)
-Utility goggles is ok, but I’m guessing you’re using it for the fury in which case experimental rifle turret would be better.

@Ronin

Mostly just looking for flamethrower, as I find it a lot of fun (I know it’s far from optimal, but who doesn’t like a portable barbecue?). I’ve tried bombs (which I sort of enjoyed, but hated the connstant stooping) and grenades (killed my fingers), but honestly probably haven’t given elixer gun or toolkit a fair shake as they didn’t really appeal to me.

As for your questions on the build I posted, in general, I’m just really new to engineer, which is why I’m looking for valuable feedback like yours! But for specifics, the reasoning behind each was:
-chose medkit over healing turret for the super-low cooldown bandage wounds, and because the turret is available in tougher fights through supply drop. I’m definitely not opposed to swapping back (used it in the first build I posted), as medkit seems to be pretty terrible for condition removal.
-I partially went into inventions for the 25% movement speed (admittedly the lazy man’s speedy kits), but mostly for the toughness (wanted to break 3000 armor), the smattering of healing power, and the power bonus from energized armor (from the most recent build i posted, 146 bonus power). I could definitely see moving 2 points from inventions to tools, but energized armor is something I’m not sure I’d be willing to part with
- I’ll definitely give invigorating speed a shot, but with speedy kits, is infused precision redundant? Honestly not sure, but would be interested on your thoughts there, but the 20% cooldown reduction for flamethrower seems like it might be better bang for the buck?
- I’ll try swapping out backpack regenerator for experimental turrets and try the rifle turret. I mostly have the goggles for the 10 stack vulnerability toolbelt skill and a stun break (the fury is a “nice to have” too).

I noticed you went more knight’s heavy on your armor, with berserker for the trinkets — you wound up with double the crit chance but a bit less “standing” power and a lot less health and armor. How does this build hold up in large fights durability wise? Is there a specific method you use to keep alive?

Thanks again for your feedback! I’ll try some of this stuff tonight to see how it seems to go

What content do you wanna use? Dungeons? Open world? Scarlet-style zergs?

@robertul

I’ve honestly been using it for all PvE content so far (albeit a relatively short time, since it’s a new build for me, so I haven’t had a TON of experience with everything). I’m mostly just looking to run a relatively effective and survivable flamethrower build.

I guess you could swap out rocket boots for bomb kit. Bomb kit already comes with good survivability (smoke bomb and glue bomb).
Rather than increasing your standing power through boosting vitality and toughness to take more hits, why not increase survivability by blinding/snaring everything (other than those hated dredge) and keep your damage stats. You’ll also get more aoe burning (fire bomb) which will help boost flamethrowers damage.

If you did this I can see dropping infused precision for Fireforged trigger a good choice if you don’t need so much vigor.

By the way, I haven’t actually run this build before (I’ve tried flamethrower before, but it’s just so lacking compared to bombs/grenades). That was just something I made up in 5 mins. Swap out more berserker stats for knights if you really want more toughness.