Guild Wars 2

Hi all!

I’m a returning GW2 player who used to main guard and warrior, after my little (ahem, ~2 year) break I decided to make a new account and start fresh (read: I forgot my pw for my previous account…)

ANYWAY I never had an engi before and I never had a condi class before, now that condi’s are actually on par with other builds I really want to make an condi engi! Though, after looking around a bit its clear that the engi is perhaps the hardest class to play, I looked up guides before but I still have a few questions:

1. Is there “one” particular condi build that’s significantly better than others or are there several different equally effective variants? Is it the one thats up on metabattle or has there been changes?

2. Does condi engi use scrapper ES or is everything basically condi engi stuff?

3. Most importantly, can someone walk me through the damage rotation for engis? From what I understand there different variants to this rotations, would someone mind just going over them and explaining which is applicable in what situation?

Thanks everyone in advance for your advice!

I’ll just make a full video guide for condi engi and throw it on youtube then repost it here. I’ve been needing to make more vids anyways and it’ll be easier for me to explain verbally and show then to type everything out here. You can expect a post in the next 2-3 days

Scrapper’s line is a bit more defensively oriented (to help survive in melee range), so it’s not very useful for condi.
Gear tends to be Viper’s with Sinister closely behind, but as you said you didn’t have condi class, that probably means you don’t have gear too, so screw Sinister – it’s timegated by charged quartz and that is also needed for new legendaries, thus expensive.

As for build/rotation, there’s only 1 word: BURN. So you’ll see many ppl running tri-kit grenades/bombs/flamethrower and dual pistols.
The days of perfect 40 step rotation are gone because of Alacrity (speeds up recharge of your skills). Just try to keep Blowtorch/Napalm on CD and fill with grenades/bombs.

Search wolfineer, he got some useful tricks. He is the “master engineer” in my opinion when it comes to teaching. And he seems to be a very nice dude.

I rue the day that I watched his kitten videos. I hate mechanical stuff, I dislike steampunk. And I can not stop playing my engi. I was once a cool elementalist

Heya, this is the common condi engi build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqalUUhSsYfWwWLQ7FLpFFYJuiHw3GGANw4PmGFJA-TBiHQB0T9H9oEcXK9K3+DkTPQteAAA4EAQQlBkCYRlVA-e

I’ve always played this one but since the scrapper and vale guardian I modified it a bit to this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqancoClYh9ZB2aB0ehl0iie4T+oHsEXxD47pCgGA-TBiHQB0T9H9oEcXK9K3+DkTPQteAAA4EAQQlBkCYRlVA-e

• you’ve got function gyro to ress in danger zones
• you’ve got super speed (aoe!) to reach all green fields easily
• you lose some damage due longer CD on toolbelts and no double toolbelts
• you’ve got excellent personal heal for being at red without druid
• if all your condi engis play this build, you heal them aswell

I like the old build more for damage, but you know what they say: Kill your darlings! So even if it wouldn’t be better in the end, I suggest to play it just for the expirience, yet atm I’m pretty happy with it.

1,2) The build on meta battle is about right. It’s also the most optimized build (was updated based on the last Nike’s Video from DNT). That said, there is a couple of stuff that you can change without butchering your dps.

Trait : You don’t do that much direct damage so using Grenadier instead of Glass Canon isn’t a bad choice. Other than that, you shouldn’t change a thing in your explosive and firearms line. Tools is mostly about quality of life tbh, so change whatever you want, or you can even change the line to whatever line you want.

Skills : The 3 utilities skill are important. If you even need to swap one utility, swap Flamethrower, but it will start to drop you dps a bit. The healing turret is the best heal IMO, but if you dislike it take whatever you prefer. Same go for you elite. Mortar is more usefull for blast, soft cc, water field, but not part of your dps rotation so swap it if you want. Never swap bomb or grenade out of your build. You can swap the second pistol for a shield in hard situation, but it will drop your dps a bit.

Gear : You have 2 option for different runes on meta battle if you can’t get Beserker Runes. As for gear, this is tricky. Your goal here is to always reach 100% condition duration for both burning and bleeding. A mix of Viper and Sinister is the best. Viper or Sinister Back item don’t exist so either rabid or rampager will do. Condi Engineer is expensive to build because Viper, Sigil of Malice and Nourishement are expensive to make. So you could make something like that for exemple. That would be less dps than the original build, but would safe you around 50 gold, which isn’t negligible for a lot of people.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqalUUhSsYfWwWLQ7FLpFFYJuiHw3GGANw4PmGFJA-ThSAQBRUllLpEEbK98y+BIwCiA8AAkmeAAcCAsm6EhUZAhAWsGA-e

3) I prefer not to learn the rotation and instead learn the priorities. Your first priority should be Fire Bomb, it’s your main dps skill. After that, you want to prioritize Flamewall, Sprapnel Grenade and Blowtorch. When all of those are in cooldown you want to use filler skills. Those are not big hitters, but does more damage than your auto-attack. It’s Pistol 2 and 3, Grenade 4 and 5, Bomb 3, Grenade Barrage, and Incendiary Ammo. Once all of those are in cooldown auto-attack with Grenade. Never touch the other skill as part of your dps rotation (but they could be useful for something else than you dps, like blind, soft cc, etc).

Thanks for all the advice guys! This really is a fun (albeit tricky) class to play, one quick observation: I find myself focusing a lot on switching kits to hit with my high damage skills as mentioned above but that kind of takes my focus off of dodging properly and I get into a lot of “OH CRAP!!!” moments where I’m low and often downed.

So my question, what do I do with Engi’s when have the “oh crap I need to burst heal NOW!!!” moments? (And/or getting into a situation where I know I’ll be taking lots of hits)

Guess I don’t need a vid cause these guys hit it pretty well on the head

My advice for your “OH CRAP!!!” moments would be if you have heal turret up use that then follow with blind and water field from mortar to provide some strong regen and damage mitigation. Depending on your build (which all depends on your game mode ofc) if you run tk and/or egun follow with the second regen field and a block to help with health recovery and defend against any other hard hits that may follow to take you out.

When going into a situation where you know you will take a great deal of hits make sure you have some damage mitigation off cd. Blind from mortar, nades, bombs, and ft, small heals from mortar and egun, blocks from tk, etc. Learning to cycle through those properly can help you to sustain through almost anything. If in PvP use los as well to mitigate when you’re low. In PvE try to get some support from allies and see if they can help heal you up.

I didn’t see whether you were asking for PvP or PvE so I answered for both as well as I could without going into extreme detail. I may have read wrong but if you could specify then I can hopefully change my advice to fit your desired game mode

Fully buffed (25 might, 25 vuln and warrior banners) skill priority for a condi engy should look like this:
Incendiary Ammo – infinite
Blowtorch – 37900
Napalm – 27500
Fire Bomb – 24900
Shrapnel Grenade – 21300
Grenade Barrage – 15900
Poison Grenade – 14200
Concussion Bomb – 11900
Poison Gas Mortar – 10200
Static Shot – 9100
Poison Dart Volley – 8200
Big Ol’ Bomb – 8000
Freeze Grenade – 6800
Detonate Flame Blast – 6500
Grenade – 5300
The numbers are the approximate damage per cast time not counting sigils or procs other than shrapnel.
You can see that there is a pretty big dropoff after shrapnel grenade and then a steady decline after that.

How did you do confusion? add one attack? or just the passive tics? Anyway, thank you for that list, it’s probably the best one out there. I always hated ppl underestimating poison nades.

I assume 1 attack every 2 seconds for PvE mobs.