Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

Please understand I am coming into this forum with an open mind. I’m trying to decide on a leather wearing class to play. There’s a lot of positive feedback people throw out there about Thieves and their burst, Rangers are getting almost pure negativity… and no one seems to have an opinion at all on Engineers. So I come to the experts.

I play in WvW almost exclusively. What sort of situations do Engineers excel at in WvW? What do they bring to the table as useful? Not necessarily unique (in a fight of 20 vs. 20 nothing is unique anymore) but what ways can I help my guild succeed with an Engineer?

Engineers can do well in fights 1v1 an tankcat 1v eternity but for the point gaining wise we are in big trouble. At the moment engineer has total 0 special/unique skills in them to be usefull in WvW server. Played engi since beta and just basically dont bother make new char.

List of must have proffessions for WvW if you concider winning towers/defending towers:

- Elementalist: AOE (u drop sieges on wall harder than siege weapons drop u), Swirling winds (ultimate siege defender. This skill alone can decide the outcome of big battle because you can reflect catapults and trebuchets. TOTAL MUST!

Thief: In game where there is no sttealth reveal this is just hilarious. stealht spamm heartseeker stealth and shrug. Pistol whip thiefs mad as hell too.

Warrior: Great support in buffs /banners + great dps and have insane good burst mode. Also have a look into hammer warrior.

Guardian: tanky pants very hard to kill + support teams

RAnger: Dissed by many but played well by few. Study ranger WvW builds and u find it one the best classes. Also can drop aoe arrows on walls thats usefull

Mesmer: Is there singel skill thats not unique for WvW? IMO best class for WvW. Ur zerg depend on mesmer. golem runs depend on mesmer, go stealth and port ur zerg on enemy siege, stay inside tower and port ur zerg in enenmy tower, do massive damage. If engi would get a glimpse of mesmer i would roll in happiness.

Necro: Condition damage to the fullest + use of fear is very handy. I know very little of necro butgood necros make alot huzzle with their condis.

If i would start now it would be Mesmer or warrior for me. You can have fun with engi but remember no special skills in there.

You’ll find a couple decent solo/small group roaming builds by Maskaganda that are condition/elixir P/P based. There’s also tankcat and its variants which are all bunker builds. What exactly is a bunker build in WvW, it’s not clear. Mostly it means you are a distraction that doesn’t die while others around you do the killing. Grenades are pretty good at keep/tower offense and defense due to their range, but you’re not going to be killing anyone with a nade-centric build. I suppose I should mention that there are glass cannon builds out there (100 nades or static discharge) if downing noobs and then running away is your game.

I think small groups is the sweet spot for the engineer. Because my small guild doesn’t do much WvW, and when they do its as roaming culling glass cannon backstab thieves, I find myself mostly running around solo doing pot shots and recon, or in zergs. That is to say, I haven’t really found my preferred niche in WvW yet. As usual you have to pick your fights, because there are professions with good counters out there.

Engineer and guardians are zerg vs zerg winner: aoE-Blindness and chill is the key. And engi hits up to 15 targets – other classes can only blind 5 at one time. Don’t care about what ppl say, most ppl hate engi – but he is preatty fine and for zerg vs zerg there is no better range class.

Don’t listen to the people that whine about Engineer’s in Wvw! We got a few bug fix we need, and some fix to the Turrents and gadgets we need before we can use those. Bt Kit builds and elixir builds is fine for sure, I spend most of my time in WvW, mostly solo roaming and small group scale, but I do large guild runs and commanding aswell!

Grenade kit, both with condition and power armor let’s us dish out great long ranged AoE damage, perfect for putting pressure at rams or up on the walls, and can be quite usefull in open field fights when you run trough the enemy zerg for some damage spikes.

FT is getting better and better aswell, and can be used as part of a melee train, with it’s cone attack it’s able to put out a fair deal of AoE damage aswell! Don’t use it personal, but I see some people using it and giving positive feedback about it! (+10 second long Fire combo field is awesome)

We are great support and damage soakers, and that’s my role when I Command and do guild runs, I got about 1,1k self healing going on per second, and to 5 man standing in super elixir while I support heal them I’m sitting at about 800-900 life per second, got push it evne more with some water field combo finishser! So your able to heal people at rams and the group for quite the amount, while still being able to do AOE condition removal like a bause, and putting up smoke fields and fire fields, and even in a healing build 5 confusion stacks on 5 people can do some chaos! So we are great support atm!

Beside that we got accsed to a lot of blast finishers and combo fields in most of our team builds, and we don’t have the same need for stunbreakers in large fights, so we can do 4 kit builds!

Solo roaming we are beast’s atm if your into that, one of the best 1vs1 classes in my opinion, sitting there with Elementalists and Mesmer. We got the best burst condition in the entire game, which means only D/D or D/F Elementalists actually can keep up with the cleansing (Also Necromancers in an anito condition damage build is dangerous)! HGH builds shine, both Power and Condtion types, so we got plenty of awesome going for us there.

So yeah, can’t be kitten to type more, but the Engiener is a great WvW class atm, both small and large scale! So yeah, if you like WvW your gonna love the Engineer, we got a lot of differnt playstyles we can use in WvW, so you never get bored! (I should know, got like 700 hours on my engineer soon, mostly in WvW)

I almost exclusively play a flamethrower engi in WvW I love it. I have a good amount of control while still maintaining pretty good burst damage and sustained damage. I have a friend I play with who uses the grenade build and that is a very solid choice as well, with good AoE and denial potential. I watched him keep a group at bay by making them afraid to cross into his grenade range.

What I love the most is how much survivability the class has. By being quick and elusive, I have run out of more situations than I ever should have when zerged on my engi.

One thing to keep in mind is you do have to learn the class pretty well to be effective. If you are looking for something easy that can still wreck pretty hard look at thief more.

A lot of exaggeration here by people on both sides of the fence, as usual.

You can do well in small scale fights if you go the extra mile, but in Zergs Engineers just make up the numbers.

Engineers have good AoE spam for zerg vs zerg from grenades. They can get pretty tanky with a couple of adept-level protection traits and can usually extend pretty far forward and still make it back to friendly lines with a nice invulnerability skill and an invulnerability at 25% health trait.

In small fights, engineers can do pretty well at a variety of roles. We have some good CC options if lockdown is your thing. Engineers are also excellent condition dps. We can go glass cannon but I don’t personally think that’s the engineer’s forte. Same with support/healing.

Grenade spam is ok for applying conditions e.g. vulnerability in zerg v zerg. You will force enemies to retreat back to cleanse and heal but you won’t exactly burst them at range unless they are careless and your conditions are really strong. It’s frustrating sometimes seeing targets die long before your grenades even finish inching their way slowly through the sky. You’ll have to learn to guess and pray where people will be when you grenades actually arrive.

In smaller scale roaming stuff, people often choose HGH with pistols so you can both stunbreak and cleanse.

Tankcat variants for ‘annoying to kill’ trolling people and applying crowbar confusion when it’s up.

Multikitting used to be quite good, if a lot of eq1 bardlike keyboard twisting, but with the mistargeted Kit Refinement nerf it’s fairly risky now lacking viable condition cleansing.

Flamethrower is going to mean a lot of suiciding when someone drops aoe retaliation on an enemy team and you take 30hits and die. So you have to be very careful now that you can’t mitigate those 30 retals somewhat with 30 chances to proc lifesteal food.

If you want to survive condition specs you have to go HGH/409 heavy elixir now basically which eliminated quite a lot of the builds that were left. The change to medpack4 early on and the recent KR change leaves just 409.

Super Elixir based heal/support often with bombs used to be middle of the pack for potency, but SE got hammer nerfed a while back and then very slightly adjusted upwards. Maybe it will get adjusted again to a point it’s more worthwhile, but support is done better by others. There are some very specialised booning blast finisher builds, but they’re very narrow and heavily rely on other people’s waterfields to get much mileage out of it, which might mean teamspeak or similar to co-ordinate.

You would have to ask yourself what would give you the most fun while playing?
Which I assume, the reason you are in this game, is to have fun.
At the moment i have two level 80 leather professions, the engi, which is my main and the thief. I also play WvW almost exclusively.

The thief I find easy to play, using D/P or P/D with shortbow.
It is excellent at taking camps solo or in small groups and when you need to make a quick getaway from an incoming zerg, no problem there.
But I personally get bored quick because of the repetativeness and the ease that stealth gives you for getting out of situations, which is luckily gonna change soon.
If you take comfort in being able to annoy the hell out of people, this is a good profession.

The engineer is much harder to master, a jack of all trades, master of none.
But if you are looking for fun, the engineer is definitely that, because he can assume so many roles, with varying mileage sometimes
A warning that didn’t make it on to box is that you have to be prepared to go through at least 1 keyboard a month though, because it’s like playing a symphony, constantly switching between kits.
This also might make him hard to play in laggy situations, where you end up in the wrong kit and shoot yourself in the foot instead of cleansing that foot from a nasty chill condition.
But if you are a guy that likes explosions, flames and technical gadgets, and lets face it, what man doesn’t, engi is your profession. It as close to your own Hollywood movie as you’ll be able to get in this game.

Stay away from mesmers if by yourself is all i have to say, 4 clones, stack confusion and got stealth alot…sigh.

Guys I’m not sure if many of you saw this, but take a look:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/New-WvW-progress-character-or-account-bound/page/4#post1645530

ANET needs to hurry up and really start finishing the Engineer profession because the “gate” is going to close for many of us that love the Engineer, but have moved on to more finished profession. It is very important if we wish to grow as an Engineer community that they make WvW account bound, not character bound. I know many Engineers are just a one character person, but guys this is about stemming the bleeding of Engineers and any hope of resurrecting (growing) the profession.

Some Engineer WvW action. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=324IcjrPImw

There are a few things engineers have as niche.
Clearing people and siege off of walls. Being on a wall and pushing the zerg 300 yards farther away. IMO grenadier is better than anyone else for this.

Super elixir, fumigate, and overcharged heal turret are handy if you have a ball of defenders in a lords room holding a choke point.

I disagree. Check Mask forum, his build is great, you single target down fast any other profession, have a lot of survability, and have a good fast AoE.
Build https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Mask-s-new-WvW-build-preview/first
Engi is a lot of fun, fast responses, versatile. Obviously there’s people that don’t how to to play and engi, but don’t blame the class for it, it’s a learn 2 play issue.

First off, props for your interest in being an engineer. My first character and current main is an engineer, and I’ve been running more WvW recently with my new guild.
From my experience, Engineers can fulfill a few roles in WvW. Yes, there are certain classes which can do the job better, but then you wouldn’t be an awesome engineer

Ikittenerg:
Engineers ikittenerg don’t have a “special” niche, but they fulfill a job. If you spec for grenades, you can grenade spam either on the offensive or defensive. Every little bit helps. Also, just by being a body there, you bring with you 10-15 supply for your commander to set up siege weapons and whatnot as necessary. And finally, with Speedy Kits, swiftness is never an issue. You should never be at the trail end of a zerg. Just follow your commander, do what he says, and you’ll be fine.

For Small Group Play:
This is where I feel the Engineer really shines in WvW. Small group play, aka Havoc Squads. Permaswiftness is our largest boon here. We can run quickly, all day long in relative ease, which lets us hit hard and fast everywhere on the map. The setup I have right now is p/p, with enough vitality to let me completely ignore a small group of defenders around a dolyak, kill it, then run away cackling (covering my tracks with caltrops, glue, and blocking as necessary). There’s no feeling like running across half a map being chased by a few players, until it’s just 1 determined soul who you then turn around and smash with a combination of prybars, rocket boots, and static.

If you like playing an Engineer, play an engineer. Don’t let others dictate how you play. MOst of all, enjoy the game!

Dano.2408:

I disagree. Check Mask forum, his build is great, you single target down fast any other profession, have a lot of survability, and have a good fast AoE.
Build https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Mask-s-new-WvW-build-preview/first
Engi is a lot of fun, fast responses, versatile. Obviously there’s people that don’t how to to play and engi, but don’t blame the class for it, it’s a learn 2 play issue.

Tbh that is probably the worst argument ever made and it is obvious you have never played other professions at the same level. Warrior, Guardians, and Mesmers are considered “finished”, Engineer, Ranger, and Necro are yet to be finished.

I love my Engineer and its great at stuff, but for the same amount of skill and keystrokes the other classes do more.

I think the engi does many things well in WvW, with the caveat that you have to spec for what you are doing, and trying to perform another role, will leave you less effective.
Tower defense: Grenades and Flamethower. Hit through the gates or rain down from above.
Skirmish: Dual Pistol/HGH. Strong 1vx- great roamer build.
Tankcat: Toolkit. Maybe the most trolly build in WvW.

I like all of these, but you can’t maneuver between them easily. Find a style you like and you will enjoy this class.

Goloith.6349:

Dano.2408:

I disagree. Check Mask forum, his build is great, you single target down fast any other profession, have a lot of survability, and have a good fast AoE.
Build https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Mask-s-new-WvW-build-preview/first
Engi is a lot of fun, fast responses, versatile. Obviously there’s people that don’t how to to play and engi, but don’t blame the class for it, it’s a learn 2 play issue.

Tbh that is probably the worst argument ever made and it is obvious you have never played other professions at the same level. Warrior, Guardians, and Mesmers are considered “finished”, Engineer, Ranger, and Necro are yet to be finished.

I love my Engineer and its great at stuff, but for the same amount of skill and keystrokes the other classes do more.

Dano is right. Engineer has no limits compared to other classes – he can dominate everyone, even if both players have same skill: because other classes have limits. The point is, u’ll need 500+ up to 1000+ hours to train those mechanics and to master this class. Yes, I play other professions – but I can’t play them at the same level because they don’t allow me.

As many have said I have a grenade/condition build and I primarily WvW and I destroy while zerging and especially defending the loot bags just rack up…once you fully learn your engi build you are one of the best in the game

There is no doubt Mask is a skilled player, but understand that anyone who posts videos of dominating other players is parcing together the good times to show when the build is working, not when it failed.

I know the Engineer is better suited for small groups or solo, but until you try other professions that are finished your missing out. Also this idea of the Engineer being limitless is the exact opposite. If you play a Guardian, Warrior, Mesmer with the same proficiency you’d see the difference. People that role an Engineer knew they were getting into an unfinished profession so I think people of advanced skill lvl are attracted to it so they don’t see its flaws as bad. Right now Mask runs a HGH build and variants. With the introduction of boon hate HGH might be a curse.

With multi-kit build and it’s possibilities for cleansing gone, and boon hate possibly interfering with HGH/elixir viability, and 100nades being targeted by devs in interview recently as something to squash (about the only part of engineer they appeared to have any interest in is squashing 100nades).

I’d be extremely cautious about investing time in engineer. Engineer has a history so far of dev attention being a mostly negative feature, with the exception of them finally get sigils and weapon stats to no longer be broken after 5 months. Positive but vague sounding dev statements of “we have 2 pages of engineer stuff!” turn out to be 2 pages of basically tooltip fixes and a massive nerf that entirely eliminates a section of builds.

Goloith.6349:

. Also this idea of the Engineer being limitless is the exact opposite. If you play a Guardian, Warrior, Mesmer with the same proficiency you’d see the difference.

I just can’t help but NOT understand why there is so many Engineer’s that think the Warrior is any good in PvP? How can you not see that’s the class the have the most serious issuses because of the way that class is focused about Melee Weapons, and Longbow being the only good damage option, that still get’s outdps’ed in range by close o everything? The Rifle got the most obvious y animations in the game, and is eas countered by just hugging the heck out of the Warrior, and any other weapon can be kited away like it’s nothing? They have the biggeste problems ingame with condition (That’s why you see so many use 6x Rune of Lyssa because it’s their only option to keep damage while being able to remove condiotions?)

They are fine in a melee train in WvW, when you run with a huge group, but most classes are! I just don’t get why so many Engineer is so jelly of the Warrior? We keep bashing them, calling them OP or at least some of the very best, even when the sPvP community have ranked them the worst class for some time now, and that their forums is filled with posts about some of the huge trouble the class face in small scale or solo play? A good Engineer will wreck a Warrior anyday because of our superior kiting skills and conditions in even our power builds! please, stop claiming they are better of then us, that’s simply not true

It’s hardly all bad for warriors. Take WvW:
Longbow shout warrior vs. engineer flamethrower or even grenades

warrior vastly more hp/toughness, huge support to team from shouts, really great condition removal, great survival, combo possibility from EVERY skill, better at range (grenade flight time, FT range), less feedback from retaliation/confusion-proc etc

As warrior swap to your hammer when you push to just devastate enemy groups with the control. As engineer swap to, oh wait nothing, you have to totally trait specialise to get even 1 kit to work, and you don’t have weapon swap either i.e. no versatility.

At the moment I have 4 level 80 characters that I play regularly in wvw. I only like doing small scale stuff and I have a craving for fighting heavily outnumbered and winning, either alone or in a small group. When someone new joins the group they get mindblown with the stunts we pull.
I built all my characters around this and they have their respective weaknesses and strengths.
Still, I keep comming back to my engie when things go wrong. When I play my engie I feel it’s easier to do what I want, it’s very tough to kill me, it has a stupid crazy burst with confusion, it has 2 aoe snare puddles, 2 invulns, a short cooldown/cast heal, even retaliation gets enemies to half hp before I even target them. At numerous occasions my buddies get killed and by the time they run back from spawn I’m still there, fighting the same guys they got killed by and still managing to down one or two.
To be fair, I could do the same on my mesmer or thief but I’d have to rely heavily on the soon to be nerfed perma stealth and I still wouldn’t be able to take a beating from 5 guys for so long as the engie does.
I think the engie really shines in small groups and outnumbered fights. As for larger zerg fights, thats just a matter of numbers anyway :p

@goloith while it’s true that I only choose the best clips I recorded, those are not my better fights either. With the engie I go into any 1v2 knowing I’ll win. Sometimes I don’t, but more often than not I do.
Also, I couldn’t disagree more with your assessment of the warrior. Warriors have serious issues, I think they are by far the weakest profession in wvw right now. Pretty much all their skills have huge tells and give you alot of time to evade, blind, LoS, etc. They are also at a loss closing gaps and removing conditions. the only way they can shine is by having a group working for them but then again, so can everyone.
Regarding boon hate as you called it, I’m fine with it, it will probably be nerfed indirectly through more boon stripping options for every class which is a good thing.

Longbow = Two Damaging skills that actually will hurt someone, Skill 3 and the burst abillity, both of those got a slow flight time aswell actually

Grenade kit: Will dish out up to 3 times the damage you see a longbow deal in the same time frame, also give a ton more conditions in AoE, some of them quite brutal

Sure, it suffers more from retalition, but the grenade kit dish out so much better damage that I don’t care!
The Giant Fire field the Longbow makes is awesome, really like it, but Longbow vs Grenade kit, the grenade kit wins by far when it comes to damage.
Also, Warriors will deal bad damage in a full support Shout build (because of trait lines and which stat you should take for them to be usefull, you can’t upgrade your longbeow damage while getting shout buffs, because for some reason they are in the same trait line), so that’s hardly a thing they can have both off, nothing that stops you from taking a healing Turret and an elixir gun aswell and dish out some extra support!

I do agree that FT have some serious retalition problems, but that’s the only kit with serious trouble stilL! Tho, as I said, I do agree that in group play in WvW the Warrios get betterm because people can’t avoid their obvious attack animations as easy, but they ain’t even better then the Engineer, we are pretty much on par there in my opinion! But as soon as it goes down to smaller scale WvW and sPvP, they a mess

Amadeus you have to compare like for like. Engineer traited and geared for survival will have much less survival and also much less damage than the warrior, and still can’t swap weapons for different ranges/roles.

Longbow only needs the 10point range option in a line you take anyway to be pretty kitten good because of it’s giant firefield, ranged blast finisher, and finishers on EVERY other move. Grenade has a minimum of 30points in a no survival line to even be worth equipping, and needs either HGH maintenace (which takes a lot of time away from dps-ing and elixirs plain suckitten compared to shouts) or 30 points in firearms and almost no survival traits at all to become useful, and it’s never going to give you any finishers because it has zero, nadda, zip, zilch. No blinds, no burning, no curing, no lifesteals etc.

Those of you dissing the Warrior in WvW are too focussed on 1vs1 or very small scale battles. If that’s how you wanna play, then more power to you, but it’s not what the game mode is about.

In larger fights shout/LB Warriors are excellent all around and GC Rifle builds just murder people. Add the melee burst and frontline builds and the class has the largest build diversity of all in that setting.

Of course the simplistic playstyle can get old fast, but that’s another issue entirely.

@Kalan you gotta stop spreading false information, really! First off, the Grenade kit untraited will still dish out more AoE damage, (at the same range as a traited longbow), then the longbow can! Even more, why wouldn’t you take 30 points into a great trait line as the Explosive to make your Grenade kit even more beastly AoE damage, if your going to focus on being an AoE Pressure machine? Even more, for shouts to be usefull for your team you need an enitre runeset + 30 traits for it to actually start looking like something good, why isn’t that a problem, when you clealry make it a problem that you need 30 points to make grenades better? I run a grenade build with HGH, and I also run a support grenade build without HGH, and you don’t need to use HGH for grenades to be brutal, it’s a matter about taste, and how much you want to focus on dishing out damage with the kits? You can pick up a simple kit as the Elixir gun and healing Turret and brinng perma Regen, AoE healing and condition removal while you still can stand and dish out solid AoE damage from the grenade kit, without the HGH elixir build!

Have you tried compare untriated Elixirs with Shouts? Want me to do it for you? Because the only one good for buffing and helping your friends untriated is “For great justice”, Which gives fury and 3 stacks of might, (which I do with 6 runes of alturism every 10 second with my medkit, or 14 second with healing turret)
The two others are quite bad untriated, even our Gadget Utility Google’s is a better pick up then “On my Mark”

Also, my Engineer traited and geared for the frontline as a support, can dish out 900-1k HP persecond in AOE heal myself for 1.2k per second, sitting on 22k hp and 3k Armor, while still have acces to solid power attacks from bombs, mass conditon removal from elixir gun and blast finishers and 5 seconds of block! I have run with beefed up shouts warriors geared and traited for surival and we are on par with our surviablility

Now I’m not saying longbow is a bad weapon, nor the shout Warriors ain’t good, because both a quite good, and I use longbow on my Warrior aswell! But your build you arguments on invalid arguments, and contradict yourself with those trait arguments!

The Warriors is a solid pick in open field combat in WvW, and got some things going for it, but so does the Engineer! Even more we work great in small scale a solo play compared to the warrior, and even see more play in sPvP (at least on the information I find on the sPvP forums) so unless you have a real argument beside the usual bias Engineers have vs Warriors I ain’t got bother more disucussing this sorry Wouldn’t have done so if this wasn’t a thread new WvW engineers would read, and I don’t want teem to be mislead with false information; The Engineer is a great pick in all fields in WvW, compared to the Warrior that’s only good in Larger Open field group play!

@amadeus you need to compare things in a far more analytical way. You’re speaking about an engineer with bombs, plus Elixir Gun, plus toolkit, plus elixirs being as good as a shout warrior? EG, Bombs & TK doesn’t leave any room for elixirs.

Shouts are better than elixirs, whether guardian or warrior, it’s just simple facts. Removing conditions, adding buffs, healing, supported by armour runes, massive 1200diameter range, crucially instant casts that can’t be interrupted and put on CD and shouts only require 1 instant keypress to do everyone! Not two long casts with one as a ground targeting with long flight time on top of long cast and deeply horrible 240diameter making it incredibly unlikely to hit many(any) other allies, to finally get some random effect that is often useless for the situation at hand.

Fear me can be amazing. Shake it off an aoe stun break and condition cure also can be amazingly useful. For great justice is really superb and long buffage.

I think we might have to agree to disagree on some points. Yes warriors are simpler to play, but what warriors can do, warriors really do quite well.

Engineer bomb builds are weak in WvW. The healing is too low to matter and scales off heal really badly, the ranges are vastly too small to regularly have both allies and enemies still in range when the bombs finally go off, and you need too much tankiness to go in and bomb an enemy group to have much power/crit/crit%/condition/condition-duration for damage from the very mixed bomb kit.

tl;dr Warrior is easier to use and still does a lot on the side at most WvW jobs – also most people fail to count combos from properly developed weapons not halfarsed kits, in their paper analyses and I think you’re doing the same – the exception is grenade spamming an area to make a few of the enemy reposition which is engineers role.

Wow Kalan… Just no… Toolkit + Elixir gun + Bomb kit is without Elixir’s, it’s an entire different build, that’s made to comepete in support vs a Shout warrior, I didn’t talk about using 3 kit’s + elixirs gesus! I don’t get how you jumped to that conclusion, but that wasn’t what I meant at least I compared the untriated Elixirs with the untriated Shouts!

Guardien shouts are awesome, Warrior shouts are still decent, but not half as good as the guardiens, mostly because only two out of 4 of their shouts give anything to your allies in terms of group support unless you go 30 points deep into a support trait tree, so sure, a fully traited and geared shout Warrior is a better support then a Elixir HGH build Engineer, I never claimed that, but the HGH Elixirs will boost the Engineer way more then the shout warrior will boost himself, and then Engineer can still toss a few elixirs into the fray to help out team m8’s:
Untraited shouts are useless to your team beside For great justice, compared to take, Elixir R which makes “shake it off” look like a childs toy untriated. So untraited Elixirs beat the Warriors untraited shouts, and sure if they go full nuts support build, we can still combete with that in our real support builds

Engineer’s bomb builds weak in WvW? really? I ain’t wasteing my time explaining why your wrong, because your clearly stuck in a mindset that says Engineer is a weak WvW class; Bombs is a an amazing tool in WvW if used right with the rest of our utility! (like 4 man at rams + you standing and useing Super Elixir + Bomb kit + Healing Turret for a steady 1000 AoE healing to the 5 man at the rams + 3k Water field combo spikes every 15 second, able to grant AOE Retalition aswell and amazing condition removal, right, bad support and healing there! And while your still damageing the gate and people behind it trying to repair, and have acces to powerfull conditions and two good combo fields)

In open field combat you can do that combo everytime your group regroup to get ready for going in again!

Also, if you want to see how powerfull Bomb kit can be offensive just watch one my videos where I use it, timed right it’s a brutal killer

TL:DR: I gues we can agree on disagreeing, but the problems you raise about the Engineer is more a L2 kitten ue and you not understanding when and how to use many of our tools.
Yes, a Shout Warrior is an amazing support, but the Engineer can be build and traited to be just as good, if not better, and our Ranged AoE damage is far superior to the Warrior if we want to deal damage instead of being a support!

P.S in Shaman Armor and Cleric Jewels with 25 life stacks my bomb’s heal 5 people for 380 life, I thinks that’s just fine for something that still dish out damage aswell

I agree that a completely static situation like gate ramming, in the rare times when bomb heals etc would actually make difference to the success or not of the gate ramming is one of the times you can get some mileage out of healing bombs. Also occassionally the sustained fights in a corridor/ramp e.g. central keep SM can provide enough damaged allies who don’t move much to suit for bomb ranges. But my healing oriented exotics have been mostly sat in the bank since the big Super Elixir nerf (apart from testing the minor SE tweak upwards).

The stock phrase L2P retort, and that human thing about not wanting to admit you are wrong, can be part of what keeps devs from spending time working on our class.

If we’re going down the tired old L2P route then who knows, it might be that I’m actually significantly more successful with my engineer than many people who might suggest L2P as a booster to their own ego. Having success in certain roles with certain niche builds, doesn’t necessarily mean one has to become blind to the a class’s flaws as a whole. I’d suggest to you that failing to see the difference in finish and polish between the engineer class and some of the other classes, is a Learn To Analyse (L2A) issue.

I’m not trying to get personal or combative, we’ll never know who’s ‘better’ with an engineer. However criticising a classes shortcomings doesn’t necessarily mean the critique is coming from an unsuccessful player with the class in question. Engineers have a lack of role identity, very awkward traits and QoL, and don’t really excel at anything particularly apart from ’nade spam to suppress walls etc.

I’ve seen a great many MMO releases with one or several classes in a rather unfinished state over the past couple of decades, that happens with meeting deadlines and that’s fine, usually they get fixed eventually. What I find disturbing about engineer is that it’s actually extremely rare to see a ‘underdog’ class mainly take downward balance changes post release, and lose a lot of it’s build variety, take very few bug fixes, and not get upward balance changes on it’s weaker areas so new builds open up.

Let’s hope the turret changes go much much better than we anticipate in order to offset whatever happens to 100nades and probably kits/grenades as fallout from the 100nades incoming nerfs.

But Kalan, I agree that our class got design problems, and got a lot of things that need fixed! I really hope that the Devs are working on these problems, and I even highlight them in my videos!

But you do two things wrong:
1. You talk about kits and elixirs that are just fine, and don’t need any work, that can be used in many ways and is fun to play with, instead of focusing on gadgets and Turrets you declare bomb kit bad, which is a downright lie, it’s a great kit! You even try make our second best kit (The grenade kit) sound like a bad kit, which is also not true
2. You compare our class to the Warrior (which with the necromancer is th the two classes with most problem in PvP), but you make it sound like the Warrior is something we should try to get on level with balance wise, which we ain’t, because we are allready above!

Your right to come with feedback about changes and stuff that needs to be fixed on the Engineer, and I agree, you just come with the wrong reasons and arguments in this topic, you claim some things are bad when they ain’t, and your arguments comparing us to the warrior is simply wrong!

So yeah, I rarely use the L2P argument, but there is simly nothing else that can explain why you point out Grenade kit, Bomb kit and Engineer support in WvW as a proble,, when we have obvious flaws on other skills.

If I sat down to write an exhaustive list of engineer problems each time it would take 4 days per post… even some of our ‘better’ items have their own problems, this doesn’t mean the problems with other things don’t exist.

But better to not type anything, if you can’t be kitten to do a prober job, then put focus on utility skills that work fine ( I still don’t have any problems with all our Kit’s beside the FT that’s worth mentioning beside small bugs, nor any of the points you brought up hold true to me), instead of focusing on the utility with the real problem!
Same goes for Engineers that keep saying Warriors is fine, that’s not fair for the Warrior’s when that true :/ They need to Anet attention aswell, and we shouldn’t try paint a picture of them that ain’t true!

So yeah, it’s great you want the problems the proffesion got fixed, but I still think you highlight problems that don’t exist, and got your priority’s wrong on what that needs to be fixed, so I gues your right on we can only agree on disagree ^^

@ Mask,
You said warriors don’t have any gap closers. Most warriors run GS and that has “whirlwind attack” and “rush” that with speed is incredible fast. If the warrior is going Axe Axe he then can leap at you for a devestating hit. If he’s sword Axe he can do a 4 second immobilize on you. If you have the trait that cloaks you he will use #5 on Axe for whirlwind attack and you’ll be down or mini-me (elixir s).

Tbh the more I think about it Tier 1 WvW is different than the lower Tiers so probably why I have some bias. The Engineers biggest role in large organized play is pretty much just the Boon Spiking Engineer – which is an off shoot of your boon duration build.

I also know people love grenades for sieging, but its unneeded if you have an organized group of Mesmers pulling everyone off

I’m kinda like that parent that really loves their kid, but constantly picking on them to be better.

I know they have those skills, and I still say they have no real gap closers especially when compared to a guardian or a thief or even to a melee ranger; they have the hardest of times catching up to someone who kites, let alone someone who actively cripples/chills them. They are generally the lowest priorioty target together with guardians for my groups, guardians for a whole different reason of course.

example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mMkAtDVbuAs

I know wvw is not just about 1v1 or small group skirmishes but when something like this happens you can’t say warriors are a “finished class” or better overall than engies.
thats not a one time thing either, it happens all the time even on my engie. they are tougher on my thief tho, I’ll grant you that.

Avoid trying to fight zergs unless you enjoy dying to retaliation from players who don’t even know you exist

Engineer has many, many, many viable options for WvW.
It all depends on the role you want to play, but what’s been said about us shining in a small group couldn’t be more true if it tried.

We can be heavy hitters, supporters, utility minded and excel at being a hybrid.
This whole “you can only trait into 1 kit and that makes the others useless” argument is driving it to far.
It takes a lot of time and experimenting with traits, but it’s certainly possible to trait into multiple kits. You just take the traits you really need and drop the excess/luxury traits. (for example: You really need forceful explosives but short fuse is luxury)

I played other classes, like Maskaganda, in WvW but none of them felt like hitting it home. When I want to preform and not muck about, I go in with my engineer.
I’d suggest the OP takes all the medium classes for a spin in sPvP first and then rolls with whatever he likes the most.

On warriors in WvW:
I’ve beaten 3 warriors at the same time. I’ve beaten 2 warriors at the same time.
I’ve never been beaten by a solo warrior in WvW. Ever.
Like Maskaganda said, they are by far the easiest class to kite and keep off your back.
Don’t get me started on GS users in WvW. You should really rethink your strategy if you get bumrushed by a GS warrior and didn’t survive it.
There are amazing warriors out there who use odd weapon choices and preform niche builds. I applaud them for trying and encourage them to keep playing until they get a deserved mobility buff, but warriors are still weak in PvP.

On bombs being bad in WvW:
Ha. No. Far from it.
Bombs have crazy utility and great damage.
The whole argument of “they just run away from it” couldn’t be more then false.
As engineers, we have control abilities in almost every kit which can be used in conjunction with each other to keep enemies into bomb range.

And more often then not, warriors/guardians/thieves will be more then happy to run into your bombs and go downed before they know what actually happened.
Bombs are harder to spot then you think and they ignite quickly enough.

It just takes practice and good synergy with your entire build. Don’t dismiss something you barely tried in a PvP setting.

An honest answer rather than “engineers are best class ever, you just don’t play them right” or “engineers suck”.

Stand in towers/keeps. Throw grenades.

You have people swearing by their engineer – they may be the greatest engineer player to exist, or they may be full of kitten. Either way, you’ll typically have to work twice as hard to be on par with any class in terms of damage/support/control. Sure, you’re flexible and can do it all, doesn’t mean you can do it all well.

I’ve played against all sorts of engineers in WvW/sPvP across 5/6 characters (engineer, ranger, mesmer, warrior, guardian, thief) and the most trouble I’ve ever had with any engineer, ever, playing from beta (ignoring how amazing Explosive Shot was in beta) is Elixir S.

There are a number of great videos out there of Engs kicking butt in WvW. What’s telling is that, outside the Eng elite, the responses are all along the lines of “Wow. Great play”, not “Nice. But I do that too!” – which says something about the skill level required to achieve that level of performance with an Eng in WvW.

Eng’s can be great WvW solo’ers. But to achieve that you probably have to play at least as well, probably better than you would with other classes.

Eng’s do work well as adaptable support/complement to other classes in WvW. You’ll almost never be the star, much of what you contribute will not be really obvious to other players (“That large collection of boons that appeared on my character just when I needed it? No, the Eng didn’t cause those.”), and you’ll have to be careful with some of your abilities (“Who pushed the enemy away just as I was firing up my melee spike routine?”). However, you will be worthwhile contributor in a group in WvW . . . Then again so are most of the other classes.

If you do run an Eng in WvW the consistent advice is master the Tool Kit (for its pull and its confusion stacks) and the Grenade Kit (for its ranged AoE).

Place Turrets on walls Keeps or in front of doors at Towers and Garr.
Then run around in a big zerg where you can get away with only using weapon skills.
When a Turret dies alert everyone of which base is being attacked.

Support Engineers are nice

Too be honest when it comes to open field WvW the Engineer is pretty lackluster. The only thing they are good for in open field zerg vs. zerg is for boon spiking for blast finishers for the group. Many of the Gvs.G Engineers, Necros, and Thieves don’t even make the cut.

So basically if you want to run the Engineer solo or small group taking over camps are it’s strength.

I think the main problem with zerg www for engineer is that nobody yet tried to gather a group of 15-20 proper mix of grenadiers and bombers instead of warrior train. Playing a class for half a year i still can’t see how that damage+control could be mitigated.

bromi.7809:

I think the main problem with zerg www for engineer is that nobody yet tried to gather a group of 15-20 proper mix of grenadiers and bombers instead of warrior train. Playing a class for half a year i still can’t see how that damage+control could be mitigated.

NERF maybe has tried something like this, but to be honest we don’t demand that people run with certain builds. The Supply Crate drop matches a warrior’s F1 hammer skill with the 2 seconds of stun…

CriSPeH.8512:

Place Turrets on walls Keeps or in front of doors at Towers and Garr.
Then run around in a big zerg where you can get away with only using weapon skills.
When a Turret dies alert everyone of which base is being attacked.

This reminds me of the shaman’s sentry totem in Wow where you can switch view with the totem. It is not useful in Wow at all, but if we have make use of the concept and implement a sentry turret which has the main objective of watching over a keep or tower, this will somehow defines our usefulness in WvW or Pvp.

Chaba.5410:

bromi.7809:

I think the main problem with zerg www for engineer is that nobody yet tried to gather a group of 15-20 proper mix of grenadiers and bombers instead of warrior train. Playing a class for half a year i still can’t see how that damage+control could be mitigated.

NERF maybe has tried something like this, but to be honest we don’t demand that people run with certain builds. The Supply Crate drop matches a warrior’s F1 hammer skill with the 2 seconds of stun…

Slightly different cooldown on the two though!

AoE-blindness and chilled would win every fight (and already win).

We should bare in mind whats important in WvW. all WvW videos being posted are small group/ solo pvp-minded runs. Their fun and show engi can put up a fight. None of the videos show places like rushing tower, stairs fight in tight spot where every second counts (thief here immortal!!), mesmer makes portal to sieges that need urgently taken out. How much ur engi do dmg to siege? WvW is siege wars, fight for towers not pvp. Open area PvP has very small role in WvW. Hopefully engineer will get own special role. (Well there is alredy if the turrets and mortar werent the lamest things in the game!!) Engineers as turrets and siege specialist would make us important. Just like no pro guild go anywhere without decent mesmers.