Guild Wars 2

Hello
Engineer is my last alt to level up. All other 7 classes on 80 level, geared up, with different roles attached to them.
Engi is last and still after hours and hours of reading/mist testing/leveling I still don’t know how to build this class. Any kit in my opinion has some problems.

Let’s begin with weapons. They just does not matter. No dps. Rifle on long range is just autoattack with pierce with mediocore damage at best. Pistol is just pistol. “Let me stand here and pretend that I do anything at all” weapon.
Shield is fun, offhand pistol is imo useless.
But we all know that those weapons does not matter all.
So now kits.
Grenade.
I know it’s probably best dps kit for engi right now. 25 vulnerability + around 10 bleed stacks and high direct damage. Aoe on everything, got some chill and nice burst even.
But usability of this kit just plain sucks. Fast ground targeting does not help.
Why? It sucks. First I need to turn it off for other alts, second I can’t see my range, and aiming in most cases is something like “where the hell is my cursor right in this big flashy fight”
I could make autoattack macro easly. Even automated “whole” kit macro (use 2 if not use 4 if not use 1). With my mouse software I could do it in 5 minutes, but it’s probably not allowed and nobody from anet can’t even tell me what the hell is allowed in this department.
So no, grenade kit sucks for me. I want normal autoattack on it. I can use it “sometimes” but not all the time.

Bomb kit
fun but radius imo just sucks. Basic radius is just funny, you need to plant bomb on mobs heads. But it has autoattack. Good kit but with this radius (even traited) it’s just melee weapon. Being melee as glass cannon engi isn’t best choice imo, but still kit is usefull.

Elixir gun
It’s just rifle with heal, nothing special

FT
It’s fun weapon, with all this kill it with fire theme. There are some fun builds for it but main problem is that FT got too much bugs.
1st skill misses too much. I need to be more like turret to really use this kit. I don’t like standing in one place.
2nd skill has great damage, but why on earth it’s not skill in which typing 2 second time just detonates this napalm ball? For now range of 2nd skill just does not blend with 1st skill (on max 1st skill range you can use 2 and hit target with blast) but it’s just not so “fun” to think about it all the time.
As conslusion to ft i need to stand still, find sweet spot for 2nd skill to really use this kit in proper way. But in which scenario I can really do it? Kiting with FT just does not exist at all, it sucks, misses and annoys when moving.
Tool kit
fun utility and tool belt skill. But really? smacking mobs heads with tool? I got glass cannon axe/mace/axe warrior for “smacking” and “choping”…

I really need some advise how to build my engi (and deal with kits problems) from ppl who played engi more and probably had the same problem at some point of leveling/gearing.
Build should be viable for general pve (I need some good event class with good easy to use and fast aoe) and dungeons (but not fotm, got other alts for it). It does need to be dps, It can be some support engi also.

Ok first off; “welcome to the engineer profession!”

Waves, shakes hand, overcharged shoots away, lands square on his bottom.

Secondly, due to having leveled so many other professions (and bringing in their experience into your engineer gameplay) you may find that your engi doesn’t seem well suited to a lot of things and very many of our weapons/kits seem like fluff. Once you get used to it, most kits (and our main weapons) will seem a lot better than they do at first glance and the bugs (looking at flamethrower) will seem minimal depending on your preference.

At the moment the engineer is underpowered in tPvP (The devs admit to this) but in WvW and PvE it is a very enjoyable profession and most who like it rarely leave it for long. As for what builds the engineer are good for, there are quite a few, but for leveling I’ll recommend you take another look at the following weapons/kits:

Rifle:
Most damage is from the #1, and may seem underwhelming, but this weapon captures what this profession is all about, crowd control. It has one immobilize (on a short cool-down) and one knock-down (very situational though). This weapon is very good 1v1, and in PvE you’ll whittle down unshakable stacks very easily with that #2.

Later down the line, if you don’t like to use kits, this is a very solid weapon for elixir builds (which rely on buffing yourself with thrown-elixirs/drinking-elixirs for might stacks and elixir effects). This is due to the riffle scaling better than pistols with strength, and the aforementioned CCs it provides.

Pistol/Pistol:
This weapon set up is one of our few options when it comes to condition builds, mostly due to the #4 skill. For leveling I wouldn’t personally recommend this set up but others find it enjoyable enough. Endgame Pistol/Pistol is another matter entirely and there are a few builds out on these forums that rely on it.

As an engineer condition builds can go a few different ways; they can rely on our accessibility to burning skills, they can go for a might stacking build and do a hybrid power/condition build, or they can go for long condition duration in conjunction with grenades. Most agree though that pistol #1 is kind of rubbish unless you have food+runes to increase that bleed duration.

Grenades:
This kit was at one point our bread and butter, and most either hated this or loved it. When I started playing Gw2 I decided to roll engineer, at the time grenades were the way to go for engis, and one of the first things I learned about this games was how to ground target effectively (I actually learned this before I learned strafing :x).

The only thing I can recommend is that you either ignore grenades or you keybind a button on your mouse to #1 for ease of spamming (or learn to press #1 and move at the same time like I do). Macros are kind of Iffy depending on who you ask and I wouldn’t recommend risking it.

If you get over the problem (for some) of grenade #1 then you’ll appreciate how good they are for scaling with power/applying vulnerability/applying conditions/setting up area denial. They’re also good for CC provided you use the #4 (which is one of the longest chills in the game). This is all assuming you go 30 in explosives and get grenadier, which is the only way to play grenades since they got nerfed.

I’ll go over bombs and elixir gun in another post, because these are good as well. Flamethrower I won’t defend because I tend to avoid it due to it’s peculiarities. I’ll leave that to others.

As a final note. Please ignore posters who will be less than useful. We’ve been having some conflicting views in the engineer forum and arguments have been breaking out. The class is fine (if a little underpowered) but the conflicts are all a forum problem and don’t accurately reflect everyone’s views on the engineer, only those of two (opposing) vocal minorities.