Guild Wars 2

Seen several posts asking if their build was ok given how fast they die.
We all were there as new engineers.

So, how about a post talking about our tricks and tactics for staying alive?

I run a 30/5/0/20/15 build. 3 kits (grenades, bombs, e-gun). A classic condy engie.

A few things:

1. 15 in toolkit really helps with surviving versus 10 in firearms. The key is getting all your toolbelt skills to refresh which includes two reasonable fast heals.

2. Timing. You do very well in healing with HT IF you learn to blast thru the water field. BUT, it simply takes practice to get the timing right and you have to know that it takes time to setup. It is NOT a fast heal. Lots of engineer survivorability is tied to combinations and a bit of a longer setup. So when you see the enemy coming or start taking a lot of pressure, act don’t react.

3. Backpack regenerator is great for finding a spot to heal up with a low level heal to stabilize and cleanse you (e.g. e-gun or toolbelt).

4. Blinding. Spike damage is what really hurts engineers because our healing is slow and we have fewer stun breaks. Our defense is blinding. You have blinds on pistol (boucing AE), grenades and bombs. 3 blinds plus your dodges are how you deal with spike. Your Pistol and Your Flash Grenade are on very short cooldowns so blind becomes a key way to get repositioned when melee lunges at you.

5. CC is critical (which is why stability is such a problem for us). We can knockback, immobilize, cripple etc with the best. But, we really can struggle when a class has stability given we have very limited access to stability and very few stun breakers.

6. You can always slot an escape or defensive utility if you have problems for the night. Rocket boots will let you disengage most 1v1s. Toolkit gives a 3 second block that will help in zerg fights.

7. Don’r forget the supply crate. If you are getting really high pressure and heals are in cooldown drop the supply crate and pickup the bandages. This has saved my bacon plenty of times.

8. Stealth for ranged. In a big fight, just having the enemy lose you as a target for a second or two often removes a lot of pressure. Use smoke bomb well. This is a key missed opportunity.

9. Move. To stay alive, be hard to target. Especially, given we have stealth, moving around will make it harder for you to be focused.

10. Be careful of. . . . condition transfers and retaliation. Anything that throws your damage back to you is a real problem.

Just to add a few things to your list.

When I was new, I found putting at least 10 into alchemy for “self-regulating defense”. I still use it occasionally now. It is a great “set and forget” trait. This works great in situation where you may not even have realized your that low on health. Then when you transform, you have a few seconds to prepare to use another skill to get out of danger. I have always used rocket boots, and in WvW once this trait procced, I could spam the key rocket boots was attached to, and be well out of danger.

My personal favorites are rocket boots, and slick shoes. Slick shoes meshes great with bomb kit builds. I am currently using a full celestial gear (ascended trinkets, armor, and pistol, still working on weapon smith for the shield.) , runes of the traveler, sigil of generosity and sigil of battle.using Slick shoes, rocket boots, and bomb kit, with the “self-regulating defense” trait. It is great survivability with so, so direct damage, but solid condition damage. A really fun build to play with a group of friends. I have discovered I love sigil of generosity. It has duel benefits. One, it clears a condition from me every 10 seconds when in battle. Two, it gives an enemy the condition. Adding to my damage out put.

Protection Injection + Stabilized Armor. If your having trouble with opposing CC, this gives you 33% damage mitigation while under any control effect, while giving you 55% damage mitigation when you are knocked down or stunned

Bombsaway.7198:

2. Timing. Lots of engineer survivorability is tied to combinations and a bit of a longer setup.

This would be the biggest form of advice and can be summarized as knowing Engineer to an extent that other classes do not have to. As an Engineer you have to be able to put on any skill you have available and know exactly what the effects are and combo fields you can play off of. Neglecting to utilize combos is a gross misuse of the Engineer in my mind as it allows you to be the most influential profession to a party that knows how to work with you. In a party based environment I would suggest focusing on debuffing the enemies and buffing your own members, this tactic has improved the overall survivability of my parties more than I can count.

we have a lot of knockback as engineers, so my survival strategy apart from the obvious block skills on shield and tool kit (this kit never leaves my bar, be it the block, the confusion the cripple/condidmg through the box or the magnet with which you can pull people from ledges or interrupt or even render them useless at stillness on silent storm) is knocking people around as hard as i can. stability is not something everyone has and especially everything apart from guardian, ranger or warrior can be successfully kicked from one maps end to another. interrupting rotations at the right time can take a huge load of dmg off you.
in 1v1 a dead opponent is the least dangerous so i always try to burst them down (be it with conditions or power), interrupt their healskill and finish them off in those 3 seconds. if you’re only on the defensive you won’t survive. not getting any pressure gives the opponent the possiblity to unleash their full kitten nal (the word is ars_enal, this half baked censorship script annoys me. apart from “ar_se” being a word that even kindergarten-kids don’t even laugh about anymore nowadays. update your censorship to 2014, pls) on you.
also since i don’t know every single animation from every skill of every class i usually spam blind like a madman in fight against more than one person. pistol #3 does not do that much damage but is casted very quickly, so keep it until you see an opponent use his big moves. you can quickly put on blind and your opponent will usually not be able to cleanse it since he’s already stuck in the animation (best example: eviscerate). also use blind if stomping. smoke bomb or a smoke vent at the right time can ensure the kill. i have seen so many people die because they weren’t able to stomp and had to fight 1v2 from there.

Step 1: Equip stuff that gives you ton of health points , heal power and condi damage
Step 2: Pull out the E-gun
Step 3: Shoot a super e arround you
Step 4: Deploy a health turret and try to keep it alive or deploy new ones asap
Step 5: NEVER leave the Combo field and renew it as soon as the skill cools down
Step 6: Learn to fight\dodge in the combo field and use healing fog if needed
Step 7: To be save learn to self revive yourself with elixir r´s field (what works good)
Step 7: Condi the enemie to death and keep healing till the enemie either gets that you
pretty much are a porcupine of health and runs off or somebody else finishes
enemie off for you.

Yea.. i suck deal with it

Bombsaway.7198:

…

2. Timing. You do very well in healing with HT IF you learn to blast thru the water field. BUT, it simply takes practice to get the timing right and you have to know that it takes time to setup. It is NOT a fast heal. Lots of engineer survivorability is tied to combinations and a bit of a longer setup. So when you see the enemy coming or start taking a lot of pressure, act don’t react.

…

7. Don’r forget the supply crate. If you are getting really high pressure and heals are in cooldown drop the supply crate and pickup the bandages. This has saved my bacon plenty of times.

…

9. Move. To stay alive, be hard to target. Especially, given we have stealth, moving around will make it harder for you to be focused.

This pretty much sums it up for me. Using all my blasts with Healing Turret is a nice heal (I usually have 3-4) and if I’m lucky I’ll get a random blast or two from someone else. One thing I do often forget which I’m trying to be better at is the Regenerating Mist toolbelt skill. The cooldown is so much shorter than it was back in the day, there’s no reason not to pretty much hit that every time it’s off cooldown. Add in a quick blast finisher if desperate.

Supply Turret obviously great. Stun gives you breathing room, turrets give other targets to get hit besides you, and you get Regeneration + more than 6k in healing.

Of course moving around is a basic of any class. Unless you have mad stacks of Agony on you, there’s no reason to ever be still.

Protection injection is probably the number one trait that helps engies stay alive. It was around the time it was implemented that engies started to truly become viable and its low on the treeline so it can be dumped into numerous builds.

When playind my gc statted sd build thought I rely on elixir s and tool kit shield to keep me alive. Toss s has two awesome skills that can be used defensively and offensively, probably the best elixir imo. Same with tool kit, it has some sweet defensive and offensive skills.

i run energy sigil and adventurer runes for more dodges. protection injection and backpack regen for sustain and defense vs thieves, warriors, power engis, and any other high cc build. tool kit block when i get immobilized or otherwise need to block an incoming burst. other than that i just try to kill things quickly. if they’re on the defensive or dead, then they can’t really hurt you.

11———> have fun

some time Alchemy IV (self regulating defence) its an auto elixir S who saved my life in a zerg and with automated medical responce give u a heal when u need (HTx2 + detonation+F1)

dodge when u need to dodge and not for every atk u see, we got 2 dodge and its important dodging an hammerchain or a clone blast or a stealth thief when we got the first atk combo