Guild Wars 2

Condition builds in general will suffer against someone who specs against conditions. Most Engineers right now take about 6 condition removals.

Add on top of that his AoE grenade damage which he can spam at his feet and you’re going to basically just have to walk away any time you see an Engineer.

I can tell you that most Engineers have the biggest problem with burst damage, due to how their kit leans towards attrition battles in general. In speccing for condition damage, you basically took away your biggest advantage against the Engineer.

I can tell you that besides burst, of pretty much any Engineer in the game, and that’s hard cc. Like Necromancer and Thief, he doesn’t have any viable access to Stability. However, unlike Thief, he doesn’t have a lot of stunbreakers, usually only one. Chain CC is your friend when fighting any engineer. That’s why burst thieves function so well – catching anyone off guard with basilisk venom and an instagib backstab is pretty much the biggest cheese in the game and usually works unless you’re up against either a player with decent reaction times or a guardian. However, besides bvenom, thieves don’t have a lot of access to CC in the first place.

In other words, you don’t have a hope if the player is decent. It’s like trying to beat a bunker guardian in SPvP as a condition warrior.

OP, you made the day of many an Engineer!

An Engi with Tool Kit and Shield has THREE shield options that will outlast a thief’s initial burst. But as Aegael says, the Engi has to time it perfectly to avoid significant damage.

It comes down to skill. We can’t spam any of our skills (ahem).

U can’t counter engineer with thief – sorry bro.

generally, p/s engis are going to be tanky. when you land your hard earned strikes, they will not as high as you’d hope. i can be tankier on my engi than on guard. my guard can take more hits, but engi has SO much CC, especially compared to guard. but its also a matter of skill. amateur engineers dont usually run p/s, so the ones that do will probably be good. just have to be unpredictable, and know the engineers skills/cooldowns. for example — if he uses shield block right before you land an attack, back off til the duration is over, then start bursting when it is. there are lots of thieves that waste initiative bursting my gear shield, then they have nothing left once the duration is over.

Fake it.

First attack him with something as silly as an autoattack even, and go ranged and shoot him, he will first block, than reflect most likely (I would…).
That’s his shield utilities gone right there.

Untraited cooldowns are 30 and 40 seconds, traited that is 24 and 32 but not many trait the shield since they need the points elsewhere in most builds.

Anyhow, the cooldowns are pretty long.
What he will do after you restealth and try again, depends entirely on his build.
Does he have a toolkit for another block? Does he have bombs he starts spamming at his feet? Is he grenading where he hopes you run?

The shield is my favourite engineer weapon, but the cooldowns are long and that’s its main weakness.
Your biggest strenght is that you can reset the fight.
The combination of the shields weakness and your strenght could work in your favour.
Abuse that.

Best advice I can come up with.

Get used to the fact that you simply can’t beat everything no matter what build or class you run.

FlamingForce.6389:

Get used to the fact that you simply can’t beat everything no matter what build or class you run.

I don’t think that’s the issue.

The OP wants to learn and improve himself, I see nothing wrong with that.

It’s not because a build can counter you, that you shouldn’t try…

FlamingForce.6389:

Get used to the fact that you simply can’t beat everything no matter what build or class you run.

On top of having something unexpected. An engineer never stops to amaze someone. One could have a bomb kit and easily get away from you or the other could have granade your shadow refuge(on top of having magnetic inversion which is awesome to deny thiefs one huge stealth source).
Best hint really is expect the unexpected. Not all engineers can be beaten by you and not all engineers can beat you.
I especially love the bomb kit in wvw paired with rocket boots or shield offhand and I can stealth too. Your shadow refuge? I’ll jut a fire bomb in there with a glue bomb and you’re stuck no matter if you have condition removal every something seconds in stealth you’ll still get burned. And that barrage of shots with the mainhand pistol in stealth? If you’ve got not many condition skills we can get rid of it with many of our skills.
I think the main reason you’re having issues is engineers getting rid of your conditions..maybe a condition build against and engineer isn’t the way to go as not many engineers run without condition removal(I don’t know about you other guys but I’m rather scared of necromancers loading me with conditions).

And then we mention automated response which might be more annoying to play against say a HGH user who usually uses the nifty power to remove conditions by drinking elixirs. Just saying but I love automated response against condition builds. From suddenly tons of damage to no damage as long as I’m under 25% health.
Best way to kill an engineer is really to expect everything and use everything you’ve got. Don’t focus on 1 condition and don’t forget to back off if you can’t win.

Yeah as a THF you have the ability to engage and disengage over and over again. As a condition THF you are at an even greater disadvantage but with patience and careful planning you can take down engis. TBH i would rather fight a thf with my rifle than P/S most of you are squishy so one gear shield (Tool Kit) and then a good stunlock burst from rifle and Bog Ol Bomb and its a wrap.

OP, I just want to say that you’re one of the first people I’ve read on the forum to start such a reasonable and friendly thread addressing your problems in tackling another class.

Thumbs up!

(Also, I’d love advice on running a p/s engineer)

Your problems are likely not only that the engg is p/s, but that they have particular trait or utilities that also make things a problem. Do you notice if they tend to run any particular utilities? It’s likely that they wouldn’t be able to kill you very fast with their main hand pistol, so one of the main reason you might be losing is the utilities and traits rather than the weapon set.

Depending on how the engg is specced, they may have very strong or only mediocre condition removal. However, if you spec heavily into bleeds, those bleeds can be removed by a single condition removal. As such, one way you can try to get a leg up is to try incorporate cover conditions into your build so that it’s tougher for the engineer to remove the bleeds directly. You should be able to get torment and poison pretty easily, although this may mean making build adjustments to compensate. I’m not sure it’s really possible to apply conditions en masse with a thief like a necro can, but engineers can sometimes have difficulty with this since they only have a few specific options for complete condition cleanses. Also, if they’re using the automated response trait, then it’s going to be extremely tough for you to kill them if you’re fully invested into conditions. I wouldn’t underestimate caltrops either. Engineers won’t be able to block it, so if you can keep them in a small area, they might walk all over them while you continue to shoot them.

I’ve found that p/d thieves tend to play in some kind of defensive fashion. That is, they’ll generally not push the offensive, playing a very patient game based on precise timing and a deliberate routine. The problem with fighting a p/s engg is that they often have a similar fighting style, especially if they have utilities like toolkit or elixir gun.

What do you have as an alternate weapon set? Some engineer specs can be very boon based, so if you use something like s/d you can take away some valuable boons from the engineer, such as protection, regeneration, and retaliation, which will help you kill them. The static shield ability will definitely give you some problems in that regard, but if you can manage to get them to waste it on your pistol attacks, then you’ll have a good opening for some s/d action.

One trick you can do is pop shadow refuge early in the fight, right next to the engineer. P/s engineers will commonly try to pop you out with their magnetic shield, even if you’re in no danger of dying. As such, you can use this to have them waste their magnetic shield, meaning they will not be able to use it to reflect your attacks for the next while.

Additionally, you can get the gunk item steal from engineers. This is very valuable for a p/d or p/p thief since it counts as an ethereal field. Projectiles through the junk will be able to apply confusion stacks, so using your sneak attack through the gunk field can cause some confusion for additional damage, as well as helping to cover your bleeds.

I’ve had thieves say they have similar problems against p/s engineers, even the d/d or d/p thieves. Might want to see what thieves say about countering.

panicbutton.1053:

tattoohead — Be careful how you identify the thieves. Typically if they are backstabbing you they will be squishy. They will have higher damage and smaller health pools. If they are mainly attacking you with a pistol then their hp will be about 50-60% larger with more toughness. If it’s a sword they’re using, somewhere in between.

Kirschwasser — Thanks Needed to write a little disclaimer in the beginning, was hoping there was no backlash when I wrote this post. I was just as happy to see positive and constructive responses.

Good point, i have been playing my PVT necro a lot recently (33khp 3k+ armor) everything seems squishy to me now lol.

My very first class was a p/d thief. It was so fun back in the days when no one took condition removals. My biggest problem the condition thief was only being able to stack 1 condition. These days if I were to play that class I’d probably take a poison so I could at least stack 3 conditions. That would definitely hurt me as an engineer. I think one problem you may have is that engineers come in all shapes and sizes. We only have 3 weapons to choose from, so many of us will be p/s. Some may have multiple ways of removing conditions and that will really make the fight tough for you. Others, like me, barely have any condition removal, so I have to be very careful with p/d thieves, and I don’t even attempt to fight condi necros. Since I have both a thief and necro, I can tell very early on whether to flee or fight. There’s been alot of good advice in this thread, but the problem is you just never know what that engineer is going to do until the fight is started. You need to know early on what kits the guy is running. Even worse, I swap kits and traits on the fly so even if I’ve fought someone earlier, 10 mins later I may be running a different kit. I hate to say it but my best advice is to roll an engineer and just try to get into the mind of one of us. If you do that though, be prepared to never want to play your condi thief again, lol. Honestly, I only made my engineer because I wanted a p/p class. Ironically enough, I now run p/s and the condition spreading is far better than what a p/d thief can do. I really wanted to go back and try p/d after the latest patch added torment, but after crunching numbers I just couldn’t find a build that comes anywhere close to my p/x condi engineer.

Short answer: you can’t.

The engineer class is the most complex one, since it has access to so many abilities via kits, and there is no rotation to go through, the way he chooses to use skills, switch between kits, and his approach to a given pvp scenario are unique to each engineer (worth their salt).

You can’t tell what combos he’ll pull off, or when, if he plays aggressive or defensive, etc.

Also you have no idea what kits he has equipped – which literally means you have no clue apart from his weapon set, what he’s running, what abilities he has access to, and how he can combo with them.

Regarding shield / gear block and reflect… You don’t use them when someone auto attacks you, you use them at specific moments in the fight that either help you avoid big damage / condi appliers, or to create offensive (knockdown, daze, closing distance to target etc) play. GW2 is not a game about not being hit at all (which is impossible, yes even for a S/D thief or D/P thief etc). The game is about knowing what hits (skills / abilities) you can afford to get hit with, and which ones you need to avoid / block / reflect etc.

While knocking a thief out of refuge with magnetic inversion is nice, keep in mind you can also go stealth for just as long as he does (since if they use refuge and you are not in a position to knock him out within 1-2 seconds, you can just as well bomb it to get your own stealth which will also last longer than his giving you the surprise element).

The fight is far from each character standing still and spamming 1 to stack bleeds on other one (like an old west duel lol).

Simply put this is just a skills game. Know the basic P/S builds from HGH to 3 kits. Once you do that you’ll be OK. I say this seriously because P/D is actually hard to counter (especially in WvW with critters around). Even with strong condition removal your constant application can leave some baffled as to what to do. If you are 0 0 30 20 20 use you dodges and stealth appropriately. You have torment as a cover condition now so keep him moving and apply it (if he has elixir gun force him out of the super elixir field if you can). While it is true engineer have lots of tools blocks and CC we do not do well with hard CC ourselves due to our lack short cd stun breaks and stability in most builds. So use your venom/guild appropriately and keep condition applied with HGH there is a chance you will get burned down do use your shadow step for a clear and to get range and evaluate if you really want to deal with that fight. Truth is in most cases the well played engineer will be a pain in the kitten and like any good thief you should simply break off and come back later or not at all.

All this being said your conclusion is correct it is the rock to you scissors. But this ait RPS balancing so if you use your stealth right stop attack when reflect is up and take time with the fight you can win. I admit it happened to me vs a PD thief in my early days he seemed to simply avoid the counters and take the fight slow. I lost one won one and lost another. I think he simply knew the build I was running well enough to just dodge the important parts.

On my PD thief I simply try to know when the Static Shot and poison darts are coming. If i dodge those it will be OK. I watch for the pull from tool kit as the animation is obvious (look like a block but you see no block buff) and dodge that. If you do that correctly you avoided any burst coming your way as grenades are easy to dodge unless the guy is a genius of throwing them vs a moving target. Thieves Guild can also act as an I win button Vs this build especially is blocks are down. Most 3 kit and HGH engineers unlike other opponents do not have the mobility to really run a PD thief.

As a thief is simply try to avoid them though. Like necromancer the time it will take to down him on a condition build other than nades is just too long. Its better to move onto softer targets with less condition management imho.

Last but not least dagger storm can get you some breathing room VS most engineers without nades. It wont win most fights for you but it will give you a sec to let cds recharge and plan your next move.

GL out there.

I’m running Koroshi build with 2 kits and Rocket boots.

While the advice you gave him regarding engi vs p/d thief holds water, as I said in my initial post, each engineer plays in a unique way, there is nothing set in stone or predetermined.

Given the 1v1 scenario in WvW, either player can freely disengage if so they chose to do (proximity to zergs, duration of the possible engagement – 2 condi classes that also have good sustain and condi clear, as well as stealth and good movement). Thief is predictable no matter what weapon setup they run (once you saw what they use, you know all moves they do and in what order, there’s no ingenious way to do d/p or p/d or s/d, the weapon sets pretty much dictate everything for the thief). It’s obvious that if a p/d goes stealth he will shortly follow up with the mini-unload to stack bleeds, if he comes in melee range he wants to get a CnD or torment etc.

Regarding to dodging poison darts and static shot – open for pull into pry bar, plus personally I run superior sigil of Doom on pistol, so my poison is not tied only to poison darts skill, nor is telegraphed. Then we talk about elites, you run thieves guild or Dagger Storm, I run Elixir X for WvW, because they allow me to keep on moving and counter other classes elites (both tornado and rampage).

And in the end, is all about a bit of RNG and player skill (anticipation / preparation / reaction / awareness), popping reflect just as your stealth ends and you unload all the bleeds on yourself, dropping smoke bomb when you come to CnD or shadowstrike then stealthing from it into a pull + pry bar confussion etc.

Conclusion: if a fight lasts longer than you planned for it, disengage. You can’t win them all, there is no 100% guide / masterplan to beat X or Y class in 1v1 WvW.