Guild Wars 2

Hey guys I come here to learn how to kill you! >:-) But on a serious note, I respect all engineer players because I do know you guys have to micromanage just like the elementalist does. I have played all professions besides the engineer and currently am saving up to buy another character slot for it.

What I want to know is how do most people build? What is the burst rotations? When is an engineer vulnerable? HOW THE kitten DO I COUNTER GRENADES? What is the glass cannon build like? Thanks in advance. And to trade off ill make a thread on how to counter a thief with the engineer once i learn how engineers play.

Grenades Engis have mostly HGH and this means they have many stacks of might.

So go for sword/dagger. Steal our buffs, remove all conditions. Problem solved.

tl;dr: 3333333333 Engi dead

You just kill us.

…at least thats pretty much my experience in WvW.

PS: I suck at PvP

Nades bane is S/D, anything other than that is…well…. cannon fodder.

Tricky part is how do most people build. You can strap anything on an engineer. Nowadays your best matchup might be against the said ‘overpowered’ HGH*409 P/P Grenades when using Sword/Dagger, can’t live if you continually rip the boons that actually sustain him but you’ll have to be fast.

The boonless ones, which means.. either turret or gadget based, you’d need to make a first attack in order to know the extent of his skills:

If wielding a Rifle, there are strong chances that it’s a Static Discharge build (Everytime a toolbelt skill is used, you also shoot a burst of electricity) which means that their utility skills are selected in order to have decent damaging / invulnerability-applying toolbelt skills to go with the Static Discharges being thrown at you. Very few defenses, but insane control abilities, one immobilize, one pull, and one knockback on a fairly short cooldown. You must at least dodge the knockback (Overcharged Shot) in order to have the upper hand then go fully aggressive. If you decide to reset the fight, both the engi’s health and the cooldowns will be restored.

If you see Dual Pistols or Pistol Shield without the massive load of boons and Might on top of it, it’s probably a gadget/turret related build. Even without the stacks of might, the runes of the Undead will turn the condition damage into a force to be reckoned with and the use of gadgets instead of the usual elixirs gets the Engi so poorly handle 1vMany, but to literally slaughter nearly anyone in 1v1 if given the chance. The skills to look at are the Net Turret, the Battery Ram, and the Slick Shoes. The bad side is that you can’t really guess on the first sight which requires you to make a first fight, the good side is that he can’t really kill you outright unless you’ve got an oversized ego. Thieves Guild is naturally good against the Net Turret, if you detected the Battery Ram, staying behind the Engineer will take care of it, the Slick Shoes animation can be hard to see but if you detect it, just remain distant until it’s finished.

Now, you’ve noticed that all that information won’t give you the keys on how to slaughter all the engineers until the last, none of these two classes got an ‘I win’ button against eachother and the outcome is measured on who’s the most in control of the situation.

You requested burst rotations, well, we only have one burst rotation which is strapped on the Static Discharge build, throw Net, mash all the damage dealing toolbelt skills, finish with a Blunderbuss and Overcharged Shot to prevent the target from entering into its recovering stance, keep shooting. It takes roughly 20-30s for all the toolbelt skills to be up again, but most of the build users won’t wait for all the skills to be up before shooting again.

I’m curious if this is from sPVP or WvW.

Either way, there are just too many ways you can choose to build your Engi to be able to summarize how to counter one. The best thing you can do is make one and actually start doing PVP on it until you are pretty decent. By then you should know it well enough to counter it.

I haven’t had trouble with many thieves lately, the hardest ones have been really good Sword/D thieves using lots of mobility and dazing. I don’t use a boon build so the only real problem with the #3 spam is the evade.

Thanks guys I will definitely take all this into consideration when playing. My studies of the engineer continue.

Don’t forget thieves that use stealth alot. Those are the ones I tend to have trouble with. I use rifle/FT for the CC (but a skilled thief can evade Net Shot, for example).

Far as I know , as long as he doesnt stick his face onto the barrel of a rifle or suffering from KD , he’ll passively avoid Net Shot lmao

You should also make sure to use your superior mobility. The engineer has very poor methods of chasing you, so hit-and-run tactics can work well to your advantage. Even if you’re just strafing or running away, that can work as effective kiting against a grenade user.

Grenades are much more deadly at point-blank range than at far range due to the travel time, so you can also see if the engg will throw some of the longer cooldown grenades at you at far range so you can avoid them more easily (i.e. chill, poison, barrage).

Also, you can trip some people up by constantly running through them. Since the grenades are ground targeted, they will have to keep moving their cursor and reorienting their camera in order to throw them at you properly. Someone who’s very practiced might not be affected as much by this, but other players you can’t use the grenades effectively may waste a lot of time backstepping and not actually doing anything. They may try to just throw the grenades at their feet to compensate, but that’s when you can back up a bit and go to shortbow or pistols to harass them.

Good engineers will be sure to mix up the attacks with other utilities or their weapon skills, so be careful of that. If they just sit in the grenade kit the whole time, that can give you a leg up since they’re artificially limiting what their own attacks.

In the worst case, just avoid the red circles XD

You can’t win with thief against engineer if engineer is not kittened. Your only choice is to not let him win: just run away.

Even with s/d like some ppl mentioned here: the engineer does not care about boon steal. It’s like th epoint saying hard condition remove helps against hgh grenadier – it doesn’t. Engineer can stack up so fast new conditions and boons – no class can permanently remove conditions and steal boons as fast as engineer stacks them up.

Forestnator.6298:

You can’t win with thief against engineer if engineer is not kittened. Your only choice is to not let him win: just run away.

Even with s/d like some ppl mentioned here: the engineer does not care about boon steal. It’s like th epoint saying hard condition remove helps against hgh grenadier – it doesn’t. Engineer can stack up so fast new conditions and boons – no class can permanently remove conditions and steal boons as fast as engineer stacks them up.

Yeah agreed, except oh wait- Larcenous strike got no recharge and steals 2 boonstacks (meaning for example retaliation and 25 stacks of might, 1 sec later 7 stacks of might and protection, 1 sec later swiftness and 3 stacks of might, 1 sec later fury and retal, 1 sec later 3 stacks of might) while he tears you intestines out through your ears. And inf strike and shadowstep removes conditions, and so can their stealth, oh and a certain popular heal removes all damaging conditions except confusion. Btw while they are pulling your innards out of you they are also evading a lot of your aoe.

Of course bad thieves are always easy to deal with, but so are bad engineers.

Sorry about that, but claiming that larcenous strike can’t keep us at 0 might is a bit weird.

Engi is on the defensive vs a good thief with 20 in shadow arts, shadow protector and shadows embrace can always outlast an engineer.

D/P is pretty good when you need to reset the fight and try again, the hardest thief for me to kill are the semi defensive, stealthy type. Running away whenever they want with invis + condi removal and regen kitten es me off sometimes :/

MrForz.1953:

Tricky part is how do most people build. You can strap anything on an engineer. Nowadays your best matchup might be against the said ‘overpowered’ HGH*409 P/P Grenades when using Sword/Dagger, can’t live if you continually rip the boons that actually sustain him but you’ll have to be fast.
….snipped for size….
Now, you’ve noticed that all that information won’t give you the keys on how to slaughter all the engineers until the last, none of these two classes got an ‘I win’ button against eachother and the outcome is measured on who’s the most in control of the situation.

I love that my build does not fit any of these. I kill thieves with ease. I love the “jumpyjumpy” thieves 2222222222 I let my self get low to draw them in and then eats them

ohya… nope not telling what I do or how to counter it :p

It’s what I love about the Engineer, I can build it sooo many ways. Then a trip to the skill trainer and guild merchant erm bank! and I’m a completely different monster. I don’t know of any other profession that can change this dramatically.

DISCLAIMER: Only have Engineer, Necromancer and Guardian to 80 and lack extensive playing knowledge of Mesmer and Warrior.

Heiltdo.2891:

Engi is on the defensive vs a good thief with 20 in shadow arts, shadow protector and shadows embrace can always outlast an engineer.

D/P is pretty good when you need to reset the fight and try again, the hardest thief for me to kill are the semi defensive, stealthy type. Running away whenever they want with invis + condi removal and regen kitten es me off sometimes :/

This is true, the really well played theives that can stealth off and come back full health over and over and over are annoying. If I can lock them down long enough I can get them but if they only come back when full health then I usually just leave. Most thieves assume that when I am 1/2 health they can attack when they are 3/4 health and that is when they get locked down and deaded!

They also like to stealth off and come back with friends… this is annoying…

From my experience, the greatest weapon against an engineer is distance. This is true in both sPVP and WvW, but my advice will continue on assuming this is WvW.

Although we have some far reaching options, using them at max range makes them ineffective. Our skills usually have one or two far reaching abilities, but the rest are only good at short or medium range. Because of this, the most effective strategy a thief can use is to keep us at arms length with the shortbow or the pistol. Use whatever evasive skills you have to maintain distance and avoid the big shots, while using teleports + stealth to keep the engineer confused and occupied. Doing this, you can eventually take down an engineer.

Many will recommend using the sword/dagger combo to strip boons, however keep in mind this is VERY dangerous to pull off. At point blank range against an engineer you will be hit very hard with chilling grenades, confusion from bombs/prybar, and probably a 14 second burn afterwards. Engineers respond to ambushed by using all of our strongest kit skills at point blank range, and even without the might stacks they can kill a thief very quickly. Remember: Engineers do get haste as well.

Another important thing is cleansing conditions. This is usually an important thing anyway, but against the engineer it is really important for several reasons. One, engineers get every condition. Two, engineers get a lot of conditions. Three, engineers get a lot of control as well. Without proper cleansing, being caught in the control network a turrent engineer has spells certain death. Devoted condition engineers get some very nasty burns and bleeds, and will usually have chills/cripples/immobilize as backups. Certain builds are also really effective at poison and confusion, and sometimes all at once. Without adequate condition cleansing the engineer will out endurance you, since you will be permanently on fire and they have 60% more HP to start with.

The effectiveness of particular tactics does depend on what the engineer is running. Boon stealing, for example is no use against an engi that doesn’t stack boons. Keeping distance is very hard against an engineer who the toolkit or supply crate. A power/zerker engineer can nigh obliterate you with the rifle auto attack alone, and match you hit for hit at range. Ambushing an engineer can be anywhere from the best tactic (support/healing engineers) to a really bad idea (grenadiers and Protection Fueled Injection), and due to the very wide diversity between builds there is never a way that a thief can ever safely claim they can counter any engineer they find.

Regardless, I still recommend distance as the number one survival tactic a thief can use. It is the most effective against the most builds, and against the builds it isn’t effective with hopefully you can disengage. For a thief this is really hard, though, since they don’t have good range either, and they lack the engineer’s true weakness: boon stacking.

3-3- 3 thief with lots of condi removal,

Good example. They put insane amount of pressure. Altho I was very limited in the duel with just a single elite.

It depends.. in wvwvw it is easy for a thief to kill an engi, while in spvp you HAVE to go S/D if you want to have at least a chance of beating them.