Guild Wars 2

Hey,

I try to play a melee-ranged, bomb-oriented engineer.

This is my build so far:

http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqel0pyaHxSfF1LJyoCdGIF6FAISR+ZZfUwWPIA-j0CBINChEEA0HJMHqIasFhhtKKalRBRJjIqWdDzcLxmcRVIAfjBA-w

The weakness of this build/ playstyle is that I’m often downed though I have 20k life and over 3k armor.
To push my survivability I’m searching for other means than toughness.

I’ve read many engi-traits that are based on critical hits from enemys, such as:
Protective Shield - Gain protection for 3 seconds when you are hit with a critical attack 20 second cooldown.
With the current patch there ist another trait:
Armor Mods - Gain 5 seconds of Aegis when critically hit. 25 second recharge

Does these traits make sense for playing PVE/ can npc-enemies crit? I haven’t found anything to hits topic in the guild wars 2 wiki?

Or has someone another advice for me to optimize my playstyle?

Thanks
Scypher

Yes they can. I have recently moved to a big damage, mostly Berserker build but by grabbing Armor Mods I find that the Aegis saves my butt pretty often. Nice to see “block” come up on my screen instead of my downed skills!

In fact it’s probably better in PvE than PvP or WvW because NPCs attack much slower than players do. Blocking 1 player attack will surely help, but they’re likely to have another one hitting you within a second. NPCs have set attack durations, making one attack every second or two so you get more use out of blocking one.