Guild Wars 2

Just to get this thread started, and to read some ideas out there…

What is the Strength of the Engineer? Regarding all the problems, nerfs, and bugs we endure and work with, what do you see as the core strength?

For me, as the title suggests, it is Combo Finishers.

Looking at the kits and elixirs, I am wanting to see if anyone else has thought of Combo Finishers and working them into their builds.

In WvW the other night, I found myself doing AREA RETALIATION and AREA MIGHT alot with the combo of Super Elixir and Napalm with Magnetic Inversion. As such, I did some more research, and came across a Combo Finisher list and started to tinker around with my build, and perhaps to see if I could Strengthen those Finishers with an attempt at a ‘Combo Finisher Build’.

http://mastodonte.fr/outils/tool-combo#fr

That being said, this is an attempt at using other kits to set these up for our teammates(I rarely run solo because I’m an average player, but have a few decent moments) when in WvW.

What are your thoughts on this?

(Edit: If this topic has already been discussed, then ignore it. Forum Moderator can delete it if necessary )

Only combos I tend to pull off intentionally are Area Might and Area Stealth. I imagine with Poison, Fire, and Smoke fields though I also pull plenty of those Projectile combos. Whether it’s our strength or not I imagine is highly build dependent.

A lot of the combos aren’t necessarily game changing, and are more of an added bonus.

I tried using combo to make a invis heavy build with engineer combo field to troll people in WvW, but he doesn’t work really well.

I used bomb 4 and flame turret to make the smoke field. Flame turret is really bad tho, if it doesn’t create the smoke field if it doesn’t attack anyone, with the short range it’s average.

I will have to retry it someday.

I don’t know, the engineer has a lot of blast finishers but they have always looked really gimmicky to me.
Every turret is a blast finisher when explodes but you have to sacrifice the turret that could actually give some help to your teammates thru CCs.
There is the mine which has a 18 sec cooldown, so not so bad, but the toolbelt is useless imo.
The toolbelt of the thumper turret is a blast finisher but it has a dramatic music 90 SECONDS COOLDOWN, same as DAGGERSTORM, which i don’t get why since eles have a much more damaging blast finisher with 50% bigger radius AND with 1/3 of the cooldown (WAT?).
There is Big Ol’ Bomb, but wasting such an useful skill for just a blast finisher (provided that it explodes BEFORE the combo field expires) just doesn’t sound good to me.
I don’t think i have to explain why Rocket Boots is generally a bad idea, thou it can be a nice escape if you are in a smoke field.
I think the only one left is Magnetic Inversion, then again you’re wasting a projectile reflection and a knock down, mmmm….

And even if you want to sacrifice all these useful skills to get some combo finishers remember that a guardian with a traited hammer has a 4k (average, not GC not tank) leaping blast finisher every 3.5 seconds and a thief with a shortbow has a spammable blast finisher that costs 3 ini and has 1200 radius.

We have to sacrifice much more in order to obtain a weaker burst combo finishing than sbow thief and a weaker sustained combo finishing than guardian.

IMO we’re better with our tool kit, granade/bomb, elixir S etc. giving some utility to the party and generally annoying the enemy

I guess I shouldn’t have posed this as a question, hehe…

I get where everyone is coming from.

More than anything, I’m not as well versed, nor as coordinated as some Engineers. Thus this thread.

More than anything I was wanting some thoughts and experiences on these Combo Finishers, because, as all of us Engineers know, our class has some issues that need to be addressed.

Thanks for the responses, everyone

Engineers have a lot of combo finishers – most of them Blast, or Physical Projectile. There’s also two Leap finishers, but no Whirl finishers. As for combo fields, there’s far fewer options for that, with almost all of them being tied to Kits.

For a build that used the most possible distinct combo fields, it would have to use: Healing Turret, Bomb Kit (Smoke and Fire), Grenade Kit (Poison), and Elixir Gun (Light). To maximize the amount of finishers, Thumper Turret offers three Blast finishers (Thump, Detonation, and Shockwave), Healing Turret can be detonated with relatively little cooldown afterward for another Blast, while the Rifle weapon offers one of the only two Leap finishers available, and Throw Mine is available every eighteen seconds, untraited.

The build I use tends to emphasize the AoE Heal combo, for the little boost in health it grants. Can also use the Stealth combo, but I have difficulty getting it to stack properly, perhaps due to the order I’m activating it in.

Working on coming up with a build focusing on the use of Combos, should have it done soon.

Edit: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUlIqqb3zylF1LJyIFfGnBqQeJSRlZZfUIXPIA

The best I could come up with. There’s probably something stupid in it somewhere.

Elixir X (tornado) for whirl finish….but picking that over supply elite isn’t an option really.

(according to wiki anyway)

For PvE, I used to use a static discharge with bombs build.

1. drop turret of choice
2. drop BoB
3. drop fire bomb
4. after fire bomb goes off, but before Bob goes off, det turret
5. BoB goes off.

For anyone stupid enough to be in the radius (hi mobs!), that gives you 2 explosions, 6 stacks of might, and a blowout. Veery nasty.

Now, if there was only a way to get a player to sit in the radius while BoB ticks down but not knock you down while you’re dropping all that, then this might actually have some utility outside kindergarden PvE.

Which illustrates why I used to use my engineer.

We definitely have to finish our own combo fields to be effective in any build (except for that one where you try to run up real close to somebody and hope he doesn’t dodge while you use the same skill twice at the same time—that one doesn’t really use any combos).

Bomb kit is great as it has two fields and a blast finisher. Ditto on Elixir gun, and you can get leap retaliation and blast retaliation from it—not all that bad.

Of course, with good timing you can detonate your healing turret in its own water field…

The only use I’ve found for stealth is to drop BoB and smoke bomb while I run to rez someone—it’s such a great feeling when you not only interrupt the stomp, but also stealth yourself and your downed teammate. Unfortunately, BoB’s fuse time is about as long as a stomp, so it’s hard to pull off. If you’re running with a shield you can double tap 4 to get stealth as soon as possible before rezzing.

When I run SD, Ill use rifle turret, heal turret, then blow both for the SD and 2 heal burst, if Im running bombs Ill time the big ol bomb to get off 3 somtimes.