Guild Wars 2

1) Can someone explain, in detail, how blast finishers work? Are these related to Combo Fields? This entire mechanic is lost on me. I’d like an explanation of what it is, how it works, and an example of a good way to utilize this mechanic.

2) I’m a level 18 Engineer. I have used a Rifle exclusively since level 3. What should my stat priority be, in general? Specifically, to min/max my DPS, I’m wondering what I should do. I’m assuming power, precision, and ferocity. But, what amount of crit % is enough/too much/not enough? What amount of attack speed should I be looking for? I don’t have a lot of condition effects and I have 0 proc effects, so increasing my attack speed doesn’t seem like it’s any better than increasing attack damage.

3) Mortar Kit? I’m super excited about this ability and was hoping someone would tell me about it. I really hope it does not suck.

4) I’m worried that I will hit level 80 and realize the way I play my Engineer isn’t going to be effective. I really like Gadgets, I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of my utilities ended up being gadgets. I don’t like turrets, even though I was expecting to focus on them. I’m not a big fan of the kits, either, but I suppose a single kit as a back up could be useful since I cannot weapon swap. I really like the large number of snares and escapes. I like the rocket boots, jump shot, mine, etc. Would I be a viable level 80 Engineer if I did not use turrets or kits? Maybe turrets for dungeons, maybe. But I’ve got my eye on PvP anyway, so I’m not as worried about swapping some skills in a dungeon/raid environment.

I’m brand new to GW2, but I am fairly experienced in WoW, and I do believe I am overthinking this game and driving myself crazy with the idea that I will spend a lot of time on a character that I will end up learning does not fit my playstyle, because I was playing it wrong from the beginning.

Thanks for anyone who spent the time to read this and reply.

1) Yes it’s based on combo fields. Each field has a different effect based on the finisher and field type.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blast_finisher

2) While leveling power is your main precision second, ferocity third. Of course precision leads to crit chance and crit chance does cap. Later on once you’re lvl 80 is when you want to really spend time min/max’ing. Fury is 20% crit chance, Banner of Discipline from warriors is 7% IIRC and Spotter from Ranger is another ~7% (sorry can’t remember exactly), and then we have High Caliber that can be another 10% if traited, using those things you only need 56-80% crit chance depending on what you have of the above. Again though not worth adjusting yourself until later into the game, just start with maxing power and precision best you can.

3) Mortar is great, but it’s not something you’ll primarily be using, but that’s engi in general, everything is simply a piece of the puzzle. Mortar provides a blind field which is awesome, a water field which you can blast/leap through for heals, then there’s poison and chill fields which can be great as well. The skills are pretty slow though, so while it has a very long range it can be very hard to actually land them on far away enemies, learn to lead the target so the projectile lands where it’s going to be not where it was when you fired.

For leveling, doing my 3rd engi I used my experience boosters and just found vacant areas to slaughter mobs for the bonus XP, I’d clump up half a dozen mobs and rotate blinds including mortar4 and bomb4 as well as grenade3 (and in my case pistol 3, but if you like rifle you won’t be using that). Not the best way to level without boosters, but with them I was able to level to 80 in about 2 days of semi-heavy play.

4)Turrets are bleh, niche uses but overall not very good. Kits are kind of the main thing with Engi, you’re almost always going to have at least one or two of these and potentially 4 (healing kit is not great and rarely used) So I’d get used to kits.

I’m mainly PVE and WvW but for PVP with basic Engi I believe 2 kits is still the favored build. With HoT and Scrapper you get Hammer which is a fantastic weapon itself and many drop to just 1 kit (elixir gun), so again put some time into playing with kits, you’re almost certainly going to put them to use.

5?) answering your last paragraph here. Engi is a fast paced play style, again kits are king, you’re best options in an game mode is going to make use of at least one, we don’t have a weapon swap otherwise. With kits as a little aside you can pop “on swap” effects very efficiently as you can pop the kit and drop it with no real loss in time just to pop those effects (like energy sigil or streamlined kits).

With that you’re going to be using a lot of combinations of skills. The key one to know is healing turret. Healing turret → cleansing burst → Detonate turret → Elixir Gun → Acid Bomb/cancel. With that you’ve healed yourself with the turret placement for ~2.5k, cleansing burst for 2.5k, then 2 blasts in a water field for 1.3k each for a grand total of 7.6k healing all in a couple seconds. You’ll do other combinations like that and hop between kits to hit your big powerful skills in succession. You might have toolkit and use Magnet → Prybar → Blunderbuss → Jump Shot → Net shot → Acid Bomb, pulling your target tossing confusion on them, knocking them back, jumping on them, immobilizing them and hten dropping a high damage field on them, again all in a couple seconds such that if they don’t have a stun break, stability or the ability to avoid the initial magnet, well, they’re going to pay for it.

So overall Engi is complex and fast paced. If that’s not something you enjoy, it might be the wrong route. It’s always said that engi does twice the work for the same result, but I think most people that main engi find that to be the draw and why they chose engi.

Thank you for all of the information. based on 5), I’m guessing Engineer might in fact not be the class for me. I am really not interested in a lot of moveset swapping like that, though, it feels like the whole game is designed around that as all of the classes seem to rely on that. So, simply, is there a class that is more… reliant on something consistent?

If I played Warrior, could I rely on being able to use a single weapon set the majority of the time? Like, if I favor the Greatsword. Or, as a Thief. I wish the game had better explanations for the way their classes are played and used, in addition to simple lore. Can I play a Thief and rely on a something standard? I don’t want to have to combo abilities on various movesets. I don’t want to do something with a pistol and then pull out my dagger to combo with that. It seems like that is a lot of what Engineers do (even tho that is not something I do at all, and would prefer not to HAVE to do).

What class is like the polar opposite of an engineer? I don’t mean simple, slow paced, and boring, but reliable and consistent, where I don’t have to worry about a bunch of quick swapping.

Many professions stick in one primary weapon, though swapping can be huge. Again I don’t know PVP all that well (I tried and tried, but if I want pvp there’s just so many games that tickle my fancy far better, including just WvW here). So it’s hard for me to give accurate advice if that’s your focus. For PVE though most professions lean towards a certain weapon. Like on Warrior you might go Mace primary on one set and say GS on the other, Skullcrack the enemy for a large stun, then swap GS and unload the damage. You’re going to have some element of combinations for most every profession though many likely a bit cleaner with less micromanaging which I think is what you want?

As for descriptions, it’s incredibly tough, there are so many build options that change how professions are played. It’s just that some are more effective than others and it depends on the situation. So it’d be a bit much to summarize in a way that would make sense to a newer player without writing a novel about each profession and updating that as player strategies change for the PVP side.

Good news is for PVP you can just waltz in and give it a shot with a freshly made character. So give them a try, check out metabattle for builds and tips then give it some test runs and move on to the next profession. I’d probably say start with Warrior.

Kharneth.7931:

Thank you for all of the information. based on 5), I’m guessing Engineer might in fact not be the class for me. I am really not interested in a lot of moveset swapping like that, though, it feels like the whole game is designed around that as all of the classes seem to rely on that.

You can always camp Flamethrower, that’s what I do on my Engi. “Pro engis” will sneer at that, but who cares?

A general rule that applies to leveling all professions is to try and keep your Armor and Weapon levels near your character level. If you are level 18, then your Armor and Weapons should be around level 15 or so. The stats are much less important (Power, Precision, etc.) at lower levels than the Armor value.

Also, gather EVERYTHING that you come across, and salvage armor and weapons that you don’t use and be sure and save the materials.

As noted above, the Engi does tend to require Kit rotation.

If you like camping a weapon thief is the most safe bet

There is a simple Engi build.
Full Berserker’s
Rifle, Bomb Kit, Battering Ram, Rifle Turret, Mortar

Explosives (1 or 3), 2, 1
Firearms (2 or 3), 1, 2
Tools 1, (1 or 3), 2

Spam Bomb Kit 1 and use your toolbelt skills when they are off cooldown. It’s the Highest DPS the Engi can put out against the DPS test robot. (Around 35k)

To answer your questions:

1) Read the wikis on all finishers (projectile, whirl, leap and blast) as well as combo fields. Like other finishers their effect depends on the field they’re used in. While Engineer has access to many fields and finishers comboing them solo is less of a chore or necessity than it may seem. Placing and Finishing combos is not he only thing an Engineer is good for. And just about all professions and specs will have some combo utility that a group can utilize whether it be fields or finishers.

2) Power Rifle with either Bomb Kit or Flamethrower is probably best for leveling with “Strong” (Power > Precision) gear.. Don’t waste too much time trying to min/max while leveling as you’ll be replacing gear fast enough. Once you get access to 3 stat gear you’ll be looking for Berserker (Power > Precision = Ferocity). Attack speed is not something you have any control over from gear stats, and minimal control over regarding traits (some of which aren’t the best choice in their slot). Furthermore proc effects generally have a cooldown meaning they will only proc every so many seconds. When playing Power Rifle you shouldn’t worry at all about damaging condition effects because you’re putting zero resources into condition damage. And investing in condition duration (for non-damaging conditions) likely won’t give you the same return as putting those resources towards damage.

3) Mortar Kit is great utility with good damage on Toolbelt (traited) as long as your target is rather stationary. You get Poison, Ice, Light(Blind), and Water Fields as well as a Blast Finisher and Mortar #5 also counts as an Elixir.

4) Unless you’re playing in a more competitive game mode like raids, league PvP or organized guild WvW play what you like just with other Professions. You’ll find out for yourself what works and what doesn’t, and make changes accordingly. You obviously want to get the most out of your character so you’re not going to do something ridiculous like have a completely willy-nilly spec and gear with mis-matching runes, etc.. Engineers have a lot of tools at their disposal. Pick the ones you like that are effective regarding what you want to achieve and I’m sure you’ll do fine. And as always gear appropriate to the task. The only Turrets that are generally used are Healing for the extra condition removal vs other heals, and (traited) Mortar (see build below). Rifle is also used in Static Discharge builds, but that’s about it. Current Power builds typically run as few as one kit depending on which build you’re looking at, and the build below only utilizes the Toolbelt skills of 2 of the 3 kits slotted. So unless you’re planning on the insane-o Grenadier Raid/Fractal builds I wouldn’t let kit swapping discourage you since it would be no worse that weapon swapping on any other profession. Mine has limited use as a Boon-strip/Blast finisher, and Rocket Boots are typically only taken as a movement ability.

5) Don’t try to compare this to WoW. You are likely overthinking things and driving yourself crazy for no reason. You won’t know how any given profession will play at 80 until you’re there, or test out build in PvP, which I would recommend. Don’t let the feel of a profession in PvE at level 18 deter you.

If you wanna camp a single weapon/kit I would say go with Ging’s suggestion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i0aDQKg438

Try different things and see what DOES fit your play style.

Kharneth.7931:

Thank you for all of the information. based on 5), I’m guessing Engineer might in fact not be the class for me. I am really not interested in a lot of moveset swapping like that, though, it feels like the whole game is designed around that as all of the classes seem to rely on that. So, simply, is there a class that is more… reliant on something consistent?

If you don’t want to swap weapons this build might be something for you. Flametrower/Elixer non-HoT.
It has a good balance between defense and offense, mainly in PvE. When using the proper skill rotation you’ll have an upkeep of 20-25 stacks Might that’ll increase your damage output. Also the permenent Swiftness is nice for running in PvE

If you do own HoT and your character reaches lvl 80 you can change for this build Flametrower/Elixer HoT
This variant has an easier time maintaining 25 stacks of might, and has higher damage due to the Quickness. You lose the Swiftness unfortunalty.

There are proberly a lot of better builds, but I had a lot of fun using this one, and the only weapons swapping you have to do is activating and deactivating the Flametrower for the Sigil of Battle activation.

I did most of my early 80 open world farming with an HGH Flamethrower build and I would highly recommend it. Especially now with Scrapper. You could swap Elixir U for Rocket Boots for some extra mobility if you like. And if you’re in an event train you probably won’t need to provide your own permanent Swiftness.

Kharneth.7931:

1) Can someone explain, in detail, how blast finishers work? Are these related to Combo Fields? This entire mechanic is lost on me. I’d like an explanation of what it is, how it works, and an example of a good way to utilize this mechanic.

2) I’m a level 18 Engineer. I have used a Rifle exclusively since level 3. What should my stat priority be, in general? Specifically, to min/max my DPS, I’m wondering what I should do. I’m assuming power, precision, and ferocity. But, what amount of crit % is enough/too much/not enough? What amount of attack speed should I be looking for? I don’t have a lot of condition effects and I have 0 proc effects, so increasing my attack speed doesn’t seem like it’s any better than increasing attack damage.

3) Mortar Kit? I’m super excited about this ability and was hoping someone would tell me about it. I really hope it does not suck.

4) I’m worried that I will hit level 80 and realize the way I play my Engineer isn’t going to be effective. I really like Gadgets, I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of my utilities ended up being gadgets. I don’t like turrets, even though I was expecting to focus on them. I’m not a big fan of the kits, either, but I suppose a single kit as a back up could be useful since I cannot weapon swap. I really like the large number of snares and escapes. I like the rocket boots, jump shot, mine, etc. Would I be a viable level 80 Engineer if I did not use turrets or kits? Maybe turrets for dungeons, maybe. But I’ve got my eye on PvP anyway, so I’m not as worried about swapping some skills in a dungeon/raid environment.

I’m brand new to GW2, but I am fairly experienced in WoW, and I do believe I am overthinking this game and driving myself crazy with the idea that I will spend a lot of time on a character that I will end up learning does not fit my playstyle, because I was playing it wrong from the beginning.

Thanks for anyone who spent the time to read this and reply.

So I’m gonna try to answer some of your questions and give suggestions where I can:

1) Blast finishers and other such finishers are labeled on skills and only work in the presence of combo fields. Each finisher has a different effect in each combo field so take some time to read through the wiki article someone posted and familiarize yourself with what combos you are capable of on whatever weps you have.

2) This is the stat combo I run with for my level 80 engi. The damage is fantastic and the extra survivability stats are amazing for allowing you to solo some pve content, roam in wvw like a boss, etc. The skills and traits I selected are different and it’s for a build I will talk about in a sec.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdEQFAUlUUhaqYJXw+KQ7FLWGUY1H2WH7Q6XgYyCw3B-T1BFABAcBASTHgVK/KU9nrUCSz+DI8AACAgAczbGAG6QH6QH6Q7mD9mD9mDtUARMGA-w

3) I love mortar, when used properly it is a godsend as it provides you with soft cc, heal inhibitors, blind fields, and a heal field that is also a condi clear with alchemy traited. It does take a little getting used to in order to figure out when to use what but imo it’s worth the practice.

4) The setup I posted with my stat combo is what is called a static discharge build. It focuses less around using kits and more around using toolbelt skills and your rifle to do huge damage. With that build, I’d recommend zerker armor, zerk/valk combo trinkets, and either a zerk or mara rifle. The mortar kit is there for utility and the toolkit has one huge hitting skill, one pull, and a huge block plus the toolbelt skill does great damage. It is a hard build to make work right away because it’s not super tanky but it can work really well if you put in the time to play it and get used to defensive skills you have. Did I mention the burst can be pretty epic? If you pulled someone into you and then hit them with pry bar and the rifle turret toolbelt skill you could take out a massive chunk of their hp and follow it up with overcharged shot then jump shot onto them with blunderbuss and voila they are dead or about to be. It doesn’t rely a ton on swapping so it may work well for you.

Hope this was helpful, good luck learning the game and playing to your liking