Guild Wars 2

So as I’ve been leveling other characters waiting for ANet to hopefully unbreak Engineer a little bit, I’ve noticed that I was having a really rough time with Engineers and open-world leveling. This can’t all be the class, some of it has got to be me doing it wrong.

And so I ask you, gentle forumites: How do you grind multiple enemies at once in Orr? Do you have a video of it? Because compared to what I can do with my necromancer & mesmer, Engineer seems incredibly slow if I use a turret tanking trick or really risky if I use glass rifles.

I suspect the answer is, “I lean on grenades like I’ve got no legs,” but after combing youtube there is actually very few good and current resources on engineer leveling.

In general I find that glass cannons builds are far too risky in Guild Wars 2 to bother with and right now Engineer turrets are not worth using. At all. Forget them and go with Gadgets or Weapon Kits. And face it, the grenade kit is the single best weapon the Engineer has for tagging multiple mobs in Orr. No ifs, ands, or buts. An Engineer using Grenades is like a Warrior using a Greatsword or a Ranger using a Short Bow. It’s just what you do if you want to get the best output. Compare the ranged AoE of Greandes to other weapons. Coated pistols fire in a line, the Bomb kit requires you to dive into mob swarms, and the Flamethrower lacks accuracy and range. It’s no contest.

Of course simply using Grenades is a guarantee of failure if you try to deal with anything that’s now hitting a ton of mobs at a safe distance. I utilize the Rifle combined with Med Kit, Elixir R, Grenade Kit and Elixir Gun and while I can’t just dive in and tear through mobs like I can with a Guardian, I still have little trouble dealing with pressure and disposing mobs in Orr. In fact, I can solo most open world bosses on an Engineer while I can’t do that on my Guardian. This same build will win me 90% of sPvP 1-on-1 fight and half of 2-on-1 fights.

I think the most important thing with Engineers is to remember to switch it up and go through loops with intelligence. It seems that, based on what I read about Engi complaints and such, many Engineers just knuckle-headedly go into battle expecting to fight it like a Warrior and that simply does not work.

Anyone who completely dismisses turrets is a fool. Yes, they may not go with your preferred playstyle, but the thumper can be indispensible in solo PvE, and if you’ve ever seen a trebuchet set up on a tower outside of AoE reach you can really throw some people for a loop by taking the ranged turret trait and dropping a rocket turret in range of it. I’ve disabled and/or harassed a lot of otherwise inaccessible siege that way.

That being said if you’re AoE farming nothing is better than grenades. They even give you chills and blind to help.

LegoTechnic.5910:

Anyone who completely dismisses turrets is a fool.

I want to agree with you and say that the turret can be useful (I got into Engineer because I loved the whole turret idea) but as it is now its utility is situational. None of them can take any sort of pressure, many of them won’t make much of a difference over a different slot skill, the cooldown times are absurd and the damage is just above minuscule. You’re onto something by saying it can throw both PvE and PvP enemies into a loop but the functionality of the turret is not worth the slot skill in my opinion. The Rifle has a skill that the Net Turret functions for, Bomb Kit has the same range as the Thumper Turret but with much better mobility, versitility and damage, the Rifle Turret does jack for damage and is only really considerable for the toolbelt skill with Static Discharge and the Rocket Turret has decent damage but it’s also criminally slow and the Overcharge seems to take an eternity to take effect. Every turret except the Rifle Turret has a useless toolbelt skill (mostly because of absurd C/D times) And again, they all have no mobility and are cripplingly fragile.

GoZero.9708:

Every turret except the Rifle Turret has a useless toolbelt skill (mostly because of absurd C/D times) And again, they all have no mobility and are cripplingly fragile.

The net turret in conjunction with the rifle gives you all of the immobilizes. All of them. It’s pretty crazy how much immobilization you can spike if you want to.