Guild Wars 2

I’d like to say that I actually hated my Engineer for awhile. The class felt stupid, none of the kits felt great, and they did not seem to do much of anything. Using the flamethrower as a primary weapon, using grenades as a primary weapon, trying to use just one kit did pretty much nothing for me. It felt as if I was the underpowered class and I did not have any attention put into during development, and that it was simply a class to make tf2 fans happy. HOWEVER… During this Halloween event I had made another Engineer, giving it another shot. This time I had a lot more knowledge of the game, and understood the power of finishers and combo fields. After revealing that The Engineer is a profession based around creating combo fields and utilizing our finishers the class became absolutely astounding. The class I found switching between kits, making different fields, using blast finishers, in a constant dance between different gadgets. I feel like a ton of players are scared off or disappointed by this class because combo fields and finishers were not well explained in game, and thus are kind of ignored. With a class based around these combos so deeply, it was the reason why when I started off on an engie, that I did not like it. Now that I’ve been playing for a few months the class opened up to me, and now it does not suck. The rifle is no longer stupid to me, the shield and pistol are no longer weak. The engineer no longer sucks.

True as that may be, we are kinda underpowered I think. There is just so much potential left in the engineer class, but Anet does not make much bug fixes…

Ferum Flamebender.5910:

True as that may be, we are kinda underpowered I think. There is just so much potential left in the engineer class, but Anet does not make much bug fixes…

They’ve made tons of bug fixes, it just is patched often instead of once a month. Hell, WoW still has bugs for warrior that haven’t been fixed since launch. Heroic Leap I think it was. Engineers aren’t underpowered, and I know you’ve heard this before, but a bunker engineer is almost invincible when played right. You don’t have to listen because I’m sure you’re just upset and trying to feel better on forums, but the engineer requires understanding of combos to play properly, and when done the engineer is something to be feared. Look up the different combo fields they have, and build a setup to your liking.

They still have bugs reported in BWE1. Clearly if that is the case, they haven’t done enough.

Engineers aren’t underpowered, but they have few viable specs.

Its real easy to say ‘engineers are fine l2p’ while you use a grenade kit build with elixirs. But outside that? Its all pretty weak.

Its a bit like the communist countries of old. There is no middle class. Either you have great damage/utility or none.

Lyuben.2613:

They still have bugs reported in BWE1. Clearly if that is the case, they haven’t done enough.

Engineers aren’t underpowered, but they have few viable specs.

Its real easy to say ‘engineers are fine l2p’ while you use a grenade kit build with elixirs. But outside that? Its all pretty weak.

Its a bit like the communist countries of old. There is no middle class. Either you have great damage/utility or none.

I actually don’t really like grenades. I get around fine using elixir gun, elixir R, and bomb kit, but then again I am playing as more of a support role.

arrownin.3128:

Lyuben.2613:

They still have bugs reported in BWE1. Clearly if that is the case, they haven’t done enough.

Engineers aren’t underpowered, but they have few viable specs.

Its real easy to say ‘engineers are fine l2p’ while you use a grenade kit build with elixirs. But outside that? Its all pretty weak.

Its a bit like the communist countries of old. There is no middle class. Either you have great damage/utility or none.

I actually don’t really like grenades. I get around fine using elixir gun, elixir R, and bomb kit, but then again I am playing as more of a support role.

Yep, that’s one of the approved builds. I’ve used it myself, its quite fun if you have full cleric.

Try making a viable turret build.
Try making a gadget build that can’t be done better with kits and elixirs.
Try making a flamethrower build that matches the damage of grenades.
Try making melee build for the toolkit, and see how long you last.

Plus, lets not forget how we only have effectively one elite skill.

Engineers dps, -if we do not use grenades-, suck imho.

I started out wanting nothing to do with elixirs. I dove into kits of all kinds, and tried to mix in gadgets/turrets. It was mostly a flavor thing, but I wanted nothing to do with alchemy for my character.

Then one day I decided kitten it I use too many kits and elixirs are starting to look a lot more useful as I get more experienced with GW2. Next thing I remember all builds I ever use have 30 alchemy and I do without at least my elixir S as 2 oh kitten buttons, and usually 4 elixirs and 1 kit.

Not long ago I gave full blown turrets a try, for the flavor of being super mechanical with a wrench kit and turrets and that didn’t last the day…

I hated my Engi, until I tried this Rifle Elixir build, totally focused on boons to boost DMG. im auto attacking for 1,300 dmg 2k crits roughly. With the occasional jump shot+Blunderbuss combo. ill post if you guys think i should.

“Try making a viable turret build,” huh? As turrets are pretty much all I use (despite their not scaling at all aside from level, where even kits get a boost from the stat bonuses associated with having weapons equipped, 25% working Deployable Turrets trait, and Accelerant-Packed Turrets not setting off Explosives effects), here’s mine: 20 Explosives, 30 Inventions, 10 Tools, and that leaves 10 points that can be put wherever. Works okay in PvE. Have accomplished a few impressive things. Would accomplish more if traits worked properly and/or turrets scaled. I completely disregard the Toolkit, as its repair utility is limited by the fact that turrets have long cooldowns and zero mobility, leaving the repairs useless outside of extended encounters – at which point, it’s probably better to just get the trait to make them regenerate or Elite Supplies and use the Supply Crate as a downtime stopgap measure.

Other’n that (as I have this compulsion to sign on, have a kitten about Deployable Turrets being broken, and post things of very slightly debatable value every time turrets are mentioned): There’s a lot of potential in the Engineer class. I often hear it described as having a high skill-ceiling, though I’m a little fuzzy on what it means – something something more room for advancement if player possesses skills to pay bills. There’s a lot of ways to generate and take advantage of combo fields (there’s at least two combo fields available to exclusive turret builds, which can potentially be activated repeatedly in a short time (Healing Turret + Thumper Turret: Cleansing Burst → Thump [Area Healing Finisher] → Detonate Thumper [Area Healing Finisher] → Detonate Healing Turret [Area Healing Finisher], if you have some kind of freaky supertiming and the finger speed of a mad pianist, could in theory work, though it probably doesn’t actually let you activate the field that many times in such quick succession; a similar situation exists for Flame Turrets (except with Stealth Fields), and both could be used for longer chains by detonating more turrets in the combo area.)), more than there seems to be for any other class, as far as I know. Would really be nice if they’d just explain them better, or maybe give a more educational tutorial on them, but whatever. Find a place to try ’em out and mess around until you find ones you like.

Man, that was a lot of parentheses. Sorry ‘bout that – and if anybody actually tries the superlong Combo Field chaining, lemme know how it goes; until they fix Deployable Turrets, I’m pretty much done with the game.

I’m a grenade engi myself... Haven’t dabbled much into combo field experimentation - could you post a build focused on combos? I’d love to give it try, but probably wouldn’t come up with noteworthy if left to my own devices xD

I’d like to see the build you’re running because while we do have a good amount of combo fields, I feel that our combo finishers are awful.

Between all of our guns and turrets, we have no 100% projectile finishers, while the thief pistol alone has 3. Ranger axes and thief shortbow and sancing dagger both bounce projectiles and have a chance to combo, but our Static Shot and Elixir F cannot. Warrior’s rifle volley, ranger longbow, thief unload, and even the mesmer’s duelist phantasm can all rapid fire finishers, but our poison dart volley can’t. In fact, the only projectile finishers we have are all on our toolbelt (Surprise Shot, Launch PBR, and Throw Wrench), all attached to skills that make absolutely no since as to why projectile finishers are attached to them.

Meanwhile, despite being a class that has a fondness for explosives, our only blast finishers are again restricted to our toolbelt skills with the exception of the mine. BoB is fine, but after that all of our blast finishers rely on detonating our turrets, which seems like a counter-intuitive reason to bring a turret in the first place. All we got left after that is the thumper turret toolbelt, which has an absurdly long cooldown when it’s only purpose is as a finisher.

Besides bugged traits and skills, our combo finishers are my only real disappointment with this class.

This forum seems full of people very excited about some type of build, but in denial about the fact that grenade/elixer will utterly destroy it for DPS.

I’ve felt the difference first hand, and it definitely sucks.

Jump shot is a finisher as well.

Don’t worry about that finisher post, It is completely inaccurate. ALL of the projectile finishers are 20%. Not a single one is 100% as he implies.

We have a HUGE amount of blast finishers and a great deal of projectile finishers. I got no idea what that Devinchi guy is referring to.

coglin.1496:

Don’t worry about that finisher post, It is completely inaccurate. ALL of the projectile finishers are 20%. Not a single one is 100% as he implies.

We have a HUGE amount of blast finishers and a great deal of projectile finishers. I got no idea what that Devinchi guy is referring to.

Thief pistol clearly has a mixture of 100% and 20% projectile finishers, what do you mean?

I don’t think he ever said engineer is lacking in a raw count of blast finishers, his post was more about how engineer is not particularly good at applying blast finishers, which is correct.

Engineers have long cooldowns for their blast finishers. Only the shield has a blast finisher (with 30s cooldown), the rest are tied to utility skills with fairly long cooldowns. Turrets are weak, I would never bring them over other utilities. In addition, it’s far too tactically situational to rely on turret detonation for blast finishers.

Eles have many blast finishers on their weapons, some with very low cooldown (6s).

Necro’s staff #4 is much more versatile than any engi blast finisher since it’s instant and 1200 range.

If traited, ele, necro, and warrior can trigger blast just by dodging, with low cooldown.

Guardian with hammer can trigger one every 5s. Warrior hammer can do the same every 10s.

Haltus Kain.4578:

I’m a grenade engi myself… Haven’t dabbled much into combo field experimentation – could you post a build focused on combos? I’d love to give it try, but probably wouldn’t come up with noteworthy if left to my own devices xD

I used Light field, Fire field, Smoke field with Projectile and Blast finishers the most.

You can get the fields from Bombs and Elixir Guns.

This can produce AoE might, Burning, Stealth, Blindness, Condition Removal, etc.

There is one sequence of combo effects I like to use, which gives me Might followed by additional burning and two other CC effects.

You can get 100% finishers from several other skills, which may depend upon your own preferred play style.

Anymras.5729:

Other’n that (as I have this compulsion to sign on, have a kitten about Deployable Turrets being broken, and post things of very slightly debatable value every time turrets are mentioned): There’s a lot of potential in the Engineer class. I often hear it described as having a high skill-ceiling, though I’m a little fuzzy on what it means – something something more room for advancement if player possesses skills to pay bills. There’s a lot of ways to generate and take advantage of combo fields (there’s at least two combo fields available to exclusive turret builds, which can potentially be activated repeatedly in a short time (Healing Turret + Thumper Turret: Cleansing Burst -> Thump [Area Healing Finisher] -> Detonate Thumper [Area Healing Finisher] -> Detonate Healing Turret [Area Healing Finisher], if you have some kind of freaky supertiming and the finger speed of a mad pianist, could in theory work, though it probably doesn’t actually let you activate the field that many times in such quick succession; a similar situation exists for Flame Turrets (except with Stealth Fields), and both could be used for longer chains by detonating more turrets in the combo area.)), more than there seems to be for any other class, as far as I know. Would really be nice if they’d just explain them better, or maybe give a more educational tutorial on them, but whatever. Find a place to try ’em out and mess around until you find ones you like.

Anymras,

Do you use 5 turret skills? Do you mind giving me an example as how you run your turret combo build? I am very interested to learn.
Thank you.

Could someone give me some examples on combos and finishers for this class? I’m lvl 19 using pistol and shield (feels most effective atm) and flamethrower kit and then jumping about trying to find what feels right.

I really want to like this class but I feel a bit useless at the moment. i can’t even seem to get at vistas and skill points if there are too many mobs about.

I’m quite sure it’s just that I haven’t quite grasped the basics on this class yet.

I agree with the OP on the whole combo fields thing. AFAIK combo fields aren’t explained in game at all, I only found out about them from the forums.

Anyway if you want some simple and fun combo’s to add into your build, try toss elixir U and shoot through the created spell. If you get the Mesmer spell (stealths you) the shots will cause confusion on the enemy. If you get the necro skill, shots will cause blindness, and if you get the Guardian(?) skill your shots will remove conditions.

You can also combine turret skills with exploding the turrets to create effects. For example using the fire turrets smoke screen, then exploding turret, it gives aoe stealth.

You can combine alot of skills to get some really interesting effects. Just experiment with combining skills, leap through fire or smoke and see what happens, or shoot through certain spells etc.

Engineer became 10x more fun when I learnt about the variety of effects you can trigger.

oooohhhhh… That makes sense. I’ll play around with that a bit.

Cheers

coglin.1496:

Don’t worry about that finisher post, It is completely inaccurate. ALL of the projectile finishers are 20%. Not a single one is 100% as he implies.

We have a HUGE amount of blast finishers and a great deal of projectile finishers. I got no idea what that Devinchi guy is referring to.

I have no idea what you’re talking about either. Any skill that says projectile finisher without a 20% behind it is a guaranteed projectile finisher. We do have a lot of blast finishers, but our only access to half of them is if we bring a bunch of turrets with sole purpose of blowing them up for a couple stacks of might or a few seconds of stealth.

My point is that our combo finishers don’t make sense. Why do we have skills on our pistol, rifle, and elixir gun that behave just like skills other classes do, but don’t finish combos like those other classes? How come none of our projectile based turrets even have the chance of finishing on their own, but a lot of other classes have pets and summons that can? Why do the finishers we do have on our turrets require that the turrets themselves not be used (detonating turrets and not deploying them so as to have access to Surprise Shot and Shockwave)?

We can throw out combo fields real easy, but to actually take full advantage of them would require you to sacrifice much more than the combo is worth, and often take way too long to purposely set up, making our ability to combo very situational.

I love might combo field <3 I hate that it takes me 180 seconds to do it tho

Devinchi.2756:

I have no idea what you’re talking about either. Any skill that says projectile finisher without a 20% behind it is a guaranteed projectile finisher. We do have a lot of blast finishers, but our only access to half of them is if we bring a bunch of turrets with sole purpose of blowing them up for a couple stacks of might or a few seconds of stealth.

So even though Anet posted here on the forums that they made all projectile finishers 20%, your suggesting it is more likely that they went back on that without telling us, then it is that they didn’t update a few tool tips?

Or did they change some back and tell us and I missed it?

And because we have 13 blast finisher, I really have to wonder what logic you use to determine that means we do not have very many.

Ferum Flamebender.5910:

Engineers dps, -if we do not use grenades-, suck imho.

Have you tried a Rifle burst build? I do better rifle dps than grenade dps (single target).

coglin.1496:

Devinchi.2756:

I have no idea what you’re talking about either. Any skill that says projectile finisher without a 20% behind it is a guaranteed projectile finisher. We do have a lot of blast finishers, but our only access to half of them is if we bring a bunch of turrets with sole purpose of blowing them up for a couple stacks of might or a few seconds of stealth.

So even though Anet posted here on the forums that they made all projectile finishers 20%, your suggesting it is more likely that they went back on that without telling us, then it is that they didn’t update a few tool tips?

Or did they change some back and tell us and I missed it?

And because we have 13 blast finisher, I really have to wonder what logic you use to determine that means we do not have very many.

Please do put a link to that forum post, for a forum search popped up with no such confirmation on the projectile finishers. I just tested it in game with throw wrench, and it combo’d with smoke bomb 10 consecutive times. Either it was never changed in the first place, or I should go to a casino and get rich on slots. My guess is you must have missed it.

Secondly, I said we have a lot of blast finishers, but very few are practical to utilize specifically for a combo. Assuming you took that number from the wiki, 6 of them are detonating turrets. Now, this works great with the healing turret considering it sets up it’s own field. However, I wouldn’t overcharge my flame turret and destroy it for a 3 second stealth and a 40 second cooldown when its much more useful burning people indefinitely until killed. Same with all the other turrets; they accomplish much more by staying alive than they do constantly on cooldown.

After that you have Supply Crate on a large cooldown, thumper toolbelt which also has a ridiculously large cooldown for what it does, and your downed skill Booby Trap. That leaves you with BoB, the mine, shield 4, and rocket boots as the only blast finishers that aren’t on a long cooldown or that don’t require to sacrifice the effectiveness of your utilities.

Just made a post that contains all the fields and finishers engineers have. Hope it helps.

Thanks for that!

I thought engineer sucked too until I realized I had to switch out to kits during combat and pretty much spam the cooldowns of both the kit I have active and my pistol.

I had been using the flamethrower wall and poison grenade field to chain my pistol shots with some extra somethin’, but how are we supposed to be expected to chain together combo fields with turret detonations and all this other fancy crud? I can activate my flame turret’s smokescreen and use my shield’s reflect ability to trigger a stealth field, but there’s so many things that can go wrong with that for a lousy 3 second stealth. I can’t help but see how all this stuff is extremely vague and situational. I’m 80 and I didn’t know about half of these field abilities until I came here. Juggling kits for cooldowns is hard enough just to get the best timing for.

Usually in all games I play, I go for the class or build with a high skill-ceiling, but usually this should be accompanied by a viable skill-floor. “Situational” is often just another word for underpowered.

Read some interesting things in this thread. I hadn’t spent too much time looking at real “specialty” skills of the engineer focusing on pistols and rifle to do my damage. I usually only PvE so works for me but may have to work some of these into my game.

I play a pure heal/support build using bombs, elixer gun and pistol/shield and as far as team support goes, it’s fantastic. The secret? Combo fields, just like the OP said.

My problem is not the power of the builds. Its the problem of beeing able to ….

You cant be real ranged with rifle, you cant have a decent turret build, you cant equip just 3 weapons whyle others can show off any kind of cool weapon, barely any armor fits the class, i hate the shotgun theme, i hate that you are forced to use kits, because you lack weapons, i hate that youc ant change the skins of kit weapons…..

AND still i am forced to play this kitteny class because its the only class that can use rifles besides WArrior, and it looks stupid to run araund with a sniper rifle in plate…. GG A NET.

…all of those things you just stated are for cosmetic and preference related. YOU don’t like the shotgun theme. YOU don’t like the kits. YOU don’t seem to realise that turrets being popped creates a blast finisher, allowing for some of the easiest blast combos in the game with a turret build.

@ Joyafka: Yeah, I run just about nothing but turrets – only non-Turret skill I use often is Supply Crate, which is 80% turrets.

Build is currently:
30 Explosives (Accelerant-Packed Turrets; they’re squishy, so I may as well make them explode when they go down – think it adds a knockback to the detonation, too. The ten points after that are entirely for Power and Condition Duration, at the moment.)
0 Firearms
30 Inventions (Metal-Plated Turrets last a little longer, Autotool Installation is invaluable for farming lowbie material drops, Elite Supplies is an excellent stopgap for the cooldown issue, and Rifled Turret Barrels is pretty much a must for a turret engineer, due to the lack of scaling.)
0 Alchemy
10 Tools (Deployable Turrets might not work right, but it works a little, and the range it provides brings with it a little more versatility and flexibility of strategy.)

Weapon: Rifle (Better suited to the use of Power than the Pistols, with slightly better range and much more mobility.)
Sample Skill Set: Healing Turret, Rocket Turret, Rifle Turret, Net Turret, Supply Crate (As Rocket Turret is the only Utility Turret deployable, it’s pretty much a fixture; Rifle and Net turrets are simply decent all-purpose turrets with fair range and utility.)

Phase 1 (Beginning of Fight): At the beginning of a fight, the first thing I do is hurl my Rocket Turret closer to the enemy, usually Overcharging it as soon as it lands. If I’m running with allies, I follow the Rocket Turret with a Healing Turret; if I’m running alone, I’ll often use the Healing Turret as a sort of remote mine, throwing it between me and the enemy to detonate if the enemy starts moving in.

Phase 2: Net Shot (Rifle 2) the enemy to keep them in place, slap a Rifle Turret down in whatever seems a good position at the time, activate Overcharge. Take a moment to fire on the enemy some, or adjust position while the enemy is immobilized. When Net Shot wears low, hit the Net Turret’s Toolbelt skill to extend control, drop the Net Turret immediately after (it can sometimes take a moment to target – longest moment of your life when you’re kiting a boss) – and, of course, Overcharge for an additional bit of stun and a little damage. Many battles end here, without having to change position significantly; if they don’t, continue to Phase 3.

Phase 3 (Contingencies): If the battle has continued to this point, it likely will move out of range of your turrets; pick them up if it’s convenient, or detonate them if it’s not, and begin bombarding the enemy with Toolbelt skills. Rocket deals a decent bit of damage, but its 60-second cooldown really hurts its usefulness – Surprise Shot doesn’t deal as much, but you can use it in tandem with your regular attacks, thanks to its 10-second base cooldown and absolute lack of animation (you can use it in any condition, and it doesn’t interfere with any other action you might be taking.). As soon as the enemy slows down…Supply Crate to the head, if you can’t take them down without it.

Phase 4 (Everything’s on cooldown!): Either use the Supply Crate as a stopgap between your cooldowns, find somewhere to wait them out, or get your boots bloody stomping through pests.

In addition, if something gives me or my party a moment of pause, I’ll often drop the Supply Crate during my initial control phase – to extend control, put another control on the field, and deal more damage at the cost of probably having to kite the enemy back into the Turret Zone.