Guild Wars 2

I am loving all of the possibilities with the Engineer class so far, and looking forward to further bug fixes!
Currently, the group of friends I play with doesn’t really have any warriors/guardians, so we generally struggle in dungeons without a tanky class. I know there are “tank” builds for engineers in PvP, but I wasn’t sure how well those would hold up in a dungeon.
My group is around level 45 right now, so I would obviously have to be rocking a pistol/shield build and was thinking a turret based build might work decently well with thumper turret knocking things back and absorbing some of the damage. I also was wondering if, once I hit 60 (and can access the firearms trait), I should be looking at the flamethrower instead of/ in supplement to the pistol/shield, as I didn’t know how much it’s tankiness was affected from losing stability.
If anyone can provide a little guidance, it would be greatly appreciated!

Try this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/High-Survival-Regen-Build-PvE-Dungeon/first#post261400

Yeah I still need to look into the elixir gun more, haven’t used it much at all yet. I know it has great utility, but I wasn’t sure on how well it helps one soak up damage- I will have to check it out tonight. Thanks heatzz!

oddly enough I had this duty thrusted upon me the other night. However I am a rifle/gadget build so my tanking generally involved open up with everything I got, jumping shooting and rocket kick ect… and running around with the boss chasing me around until aggro was lost, then I rinsed and repeated. Was a weird way to tank and more like kitting. as long as I kept the aggro or could get it back fast enough it was all good.

StevoSupremo.4037:

I am loving all of the possibilities with the Engineer class so far, and looking forward to further bug fixes!
Currently, the group of friends I play with doesn’t really have any warriors/guardians, so we generally struggle in dungeons without a tanky class. I know there are “tank” builds for engineers in PvP, but I wasn’t sure how well those would hold up in a dungeon.
My group is around level 45 right now, so I would obviously have to be rocking a pistol/shield build and was thinking a turret based build might work decently well with thumper turret knocking things back and absorbing some of the damage. I also was wondering if, once I hit 60 (and can access the firearms trait), I should be looking at the flamethrower instead of/ in supplement to the pistol/shield, as I didn’t know how much it’s tankiness was affected from losing stability.
If anyone can provide a little guidance, it would be greatly appreciated!

I’ve tried a tank engineer set up for level 80 which revolved around using the bomb kit and the health gain from elixir infused bombs + regen of dolyak runes and backpack regenerator. I had a full set of Svanir gear with power/toughness/vitality, x6 superior runes of the dolyak, 20 explosives/30 inventions/20 alchemy and all exotic cleric accessories. With that set up you can tank trash mobs fairly easily and roam around in the world map without much trouble. However when it comes to dungeons and you’re the only front line you will not be able to tank for very long. Even though you have around 3k armor and 20k hp engineers don’t have the burst heal to keep you on the front line to soak all the damage. When I ran honor of the waves with my set up for the first time, I was fairly confident I could tank those archers and warriors without having to do too much but I was constantly dodging, running in circles if I was taking all the aggro and got downed or got close to being downed many times. My guardian friend on the other hand had no trouble standing in front of all the monsters in HotW and soaking all the damage.

I’ll have to check that out. Is there anything build scheme before level 60 that works at all for an engi to tank that you are aware of Lick My Rainbow (lol sweet name)?

Currently, the group of friends I play with doesn’t really have any warriors/guardians, so we generally struggle in dungeons without a tanky class. I know there are “tank” builds for engineers in PvP, but I wasn’t sure how well those would hold up in a dungeon.

No one pointed this out yet? You shouldn’t need a warrior or guardian, you shouldn’t need a tanky person of any sort. It’s not that kind of game.

I’d give engineer advice on topic, but I don’t want to promote bad game-play :P

Lick- yeah we ran exploreable mode the other day and it was awful. I feel your pain man.

lorazcyk- I know that GW2 claims to have eliminated the trinity, and I do believe they succeeded in eliminating the need for healers (which is amazing in and of itself) but from reading what most people say and from my own experiences, I definitely think that a tanky class is still needed in dungeons to soak up damage. There are alot of mobs that can’t be CC’d all that easily so someone needs to be able to take hits. I’m just trying to get some suggestions to make the engineer fill that role as best it can.

No. I’ve never needed a tank in my groups. No, no one needs to take hits to protect others.
If someone does, it’s because the team is not doing their job in protecting each other from damage, or paying attention to the battle.
Each person should always be thinking how to protect each other, not just one person doing the job all the time.
If someone complains they need a tanky class to protect the team, it’s a clear indication people aren’t doing their job.

Take a Mesmer/Mesmer/Engineer/Elementalist/Necromancer dungeon team. I’ll give you two examples per player.
The mesmer can cripple or pull foes, or daze enemies so they can’t use their skills.
The other mesmer could cripple and immobilize, or reflect projectiles.
The engineer could concentrate on blind and and knockdown/stun.
The elementalist could weaken and chill.
And the necromancer could give protection and remove conditions or even daze / immobilize (I’m least familiar with necromancer)

And all that, without even getting into combo fields and passive abilities, or other skills the players might have

These 5 players need to pay attention to the battle and use their abilities to protect others as needed. Take me as an engineer for example, if I see my teammate got downed I try to knockback or blind the enemies, which lets my friend rally himself up. Often I also throw them a protective boon.
But a thief could stealth the downed friend and help rally. Often though, I just have the downed player call target on a low health enemy so the team can kill it and help him rally.

But just coordinating these things will prevent a lot of damage. If you say one person and one person only should dedicate themselves to soaking damage and protecting, that’s one useless person in the team, you might as well just play with 4 people.

@lorazcyk

I agree. I was in a team and we focus on playing mob ping pong. if you were not engaged in that your job was was to pick up the adds. If you were not busy with either of those two thing if you saw a combo field up and you had an AOE finisher you should be in there using it.

Sure we had a few players go down but that is when we were not paying attention. sometimes it was bad luck but most of the time we could have prevented it.

once your team gets in the groove it is amazing what you can do

Fair enough. I was considering incorporating more knockdowns (battering ram and such) for that very purpose, so I’ll have to look into that more. Thanks so much for the perspectives guys. If anyone else has any other builds and the like to suggest, keep ’em coming! =P

oh I love the battering ram, I often switch out my goggles for that one. So many option but not enough slots

Blinds, weakness, and chills. Those are the key. Nobody can expect to take more than a hit or two from a boss-level mob, even with a myriad of healing skills. When groups coordinate applying the above conditions, runs will go a lot smoother. Off the top of my head I can think of 5 different blinds engineers have, untraited, though not all 5 are available at once.

Engineers can’t tank.
Looking at our skills, we are more designed for kiting.

@lorazcyk

True tank is not needed. But it is more of needing a survivor, to ensure no wipe and revive downed players(kitten happens). My usual party usually has at least 1 heavy armor(half the time is me, since im guardian) specced full survivability as backup and as a frontline aggro initiator, meaning to say he always the one to draw aggro at the start so that our dps can burst the mobs down before they are targetted.

In any case, i was really looking forward to a high survivability build but unfortunately its close to impossible for engineer. Engineer does feel lackluster imo, i was really looking forward to turret builds but they are not viable so to speak…