Guild Wars 2

Seriously, no idea.

Let me start out by saying that I main a Necromancer, a profession that supposedly has a high-skill cap (it really doesn’t, you just need to get use to it). I like to think I’m fairly good with that profession, despite it’s many flaws I can still bring the hurt to cheesy-classes like thief (Well, the really bad thieves). Now logic dictates that if I’m playing the highest skill cap class, I should be able to tackle a lowly meat-head flamethrowing class like engineer.

Well, the truth is that engineer has to be the single most complicated class in the game to me. The micromanaging of weapon kits, rifle skills, tool-belt skills, utilities, elites and basic dodging/situational awareness makes this class a headache to get good with. I’m not saying it’s bad, per se (I’m sure many of you engineers enjoy this level of complexity) — just that it’s difficult to get a grasp of.

A good example are grenade/bomb kit specs. Forgetting that it’s like a game of chess anticipating the movement of your enemy, the swapping of kits doesn’t help the formation of muscle memory. My eye’s are more on my skill bar than they are on the actual fight — and even then I’m making mistakes. I did try turrets for a bit to make up for my lack of skill, but they seem pretty useless with the exception of the CC turret.

My latest two builds after blowing the dust off my level 30 engineer was an elixir condition build and a rifle power/crit build. The elixir gun doesn’t seem to do conditions all that well and the rifle doesn’t seem to have many skills that support a power/crit build. I really want to enjoy this class, but I’m not sure where the water is to get my feet wet. Everything I try ends with me not putting out any real damage and a thief/warrior/guardian eating me for breakfast.

TL:DR
I’m a bad, with no sense of how this class works. I’m seeking advice on how to play it (preferably with nades as I intend it to be a WvW class).

Also, I have great respect for all you engineers out there. This isn’t an easy class to play, and I’ve taken a whipping more than a few times by engineers in SPvP. I’d much rather die by your hands than some no-skill thief.

Imo, Engineers are the hardest class to master, we have way much more utility and micro management than any other class. Many people who main other classes always claim their class is the hardest to master etc etc, as someone who has dwelled in a couple of classes, i can safely say Engineers have the hardest learning/mastering curve than any other class, may i say triple kits.

Don’t be dishearted though, learn slowly, its absolutely fine.

I would echo the ‘learn slowly’ sentiment.
Testing out all the various amounts of functionality and utility on offer currently can really only be experienced through PvE levelling. This gives you a very nice learning curve, which isn’t terribly steep, IMO. You’ll also get to know what works well in most given situations, e.g. the Big ol’ Bomb build with Slick Shoes against melee types (thief/warrior), or Grenadier build for kiters/ranged. But they’re not exactly builds you can switch to/from on the fly, unless you’ve got inventory space for a couple of armour/weapon sets with different sigil bonuses.

If you like the challenge of a complex class, then Engineer is definitely one to stick with. I totally didn’t anticipate how much I’d be enjoying this profession at l.80, and the immense variety of things we can do.

Engineer definately has some some strong tanky condition damage builds, but I feel that power/precision/crit damage builds come up short against what some other classes can do. When building P/P/C%, you can still have good rounds but over the long term it just feels like trying to beat other professions at their own game. Tanky cond dmg builds are pretty straight forward and don’t rely on kits so if you are having trouble with kit swapping these types of builds might be for you.

Besides cond dmg I feel the engineer can come up with some very good point defense builds, not through turrets, but through elixirs. I like 0/0/30/30/10 with pistol / shield, and an elixir gun for #5 condition removal and #2 cripple. It doesn’t do hardly any damage, but 1v1 this build is very tough to kill which means you can camp a control point. Even in 1v2 you can last a while if the enemies aren’t both glass cannon. Avoid 1v3. In this build most traits are up to you but the one that is must have is the 10 points in tools for the tier 1 trait that creates a spell when you swap to a kit. Each kit has a different spell and while most of these suck, with the elixir gun it creates a #5 AoE heal / condition cleanse. Heal is Elixir H, utilities are elixir B and S. Elite is supply drop because even with 30 points in alchemy, Elixir X is still crap and supply drop is a godly point defense skill. For this build to work you need to make good decisions in terms of choosing engagements, retreating when necessary, back capping and avoiding the enemy zerg squad. The idea is to back-cap and camp until you see the zerg squad, then retreat. If you do find yourself in a team battle focus on healing and buffing allies with thrown elixirs, cancelling stomps with shield skills, blocking projectiles and being in the middle of the action to keep the enemy dps off your teams glass cannons.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: One thing about this profession is that it has a lot of stuff that is totally useless, so if something seems totally useless, it probably is. Its not just you Hopefully anet will buff this stuff but until then we at least have a few strong pvp builds.

Zandur.5012:

EDIT: One thing about this profession is that it has a lot of stuff that is totally useless, so if something seems totally useless, it probably is. Its not just you Hopefully anet will buff this stuff but until then we at least have a few strong pvp builds.

I would like to emphasize on this, i feel Anet puts in a lot of effort into making Engineer versatile and stuff, but unfortunately, 80% of the abilities/skills/traits are useless. In the end theres not much customization for builds compared to other classes… Well you can customize but it won’t be any much “improvement”.

I can only speak about PvE…

My only advice for you is to leave your engi in a corner and roll a different class until Anet decides to fix the class.

My main two problems with the class:
1) Bugs
2) Jack of all trades but master of none. It literally does NOT excel in anything that other classes can do….and do it better.

My personal favorite thing about the class:
1)Backpacks. I love how my toon looks with the backpacks equipped.

If you only want to play them in SPvP, i guess they are in a good spot from what i have read.

I completelty agree with that OP: I have no idea what you’re doing either…

On a more serious note:

As a starting out engineer myself, I have been very active on these forums with rather specific questions. Just to shed some light on things that are indeed not so clear at first.

In ‘that other game’ I played a hunter since Vanilla, a survival hunter in pvp. People who played that other game should know that playing a survival hunter since the start means that I’m weird, and full of tricks

Why do I mention this?
Well, because that playstyle is what drew me to the engineer, more than the ranger wich appears the logical choice after playing hunter.

I’m used to fighting with ‘traps’ and having loads and loads of keybinds with all sorts of gimmicky half working abilities.
Guess what: feels just like an engineer!

This said: it is overwhelming at times and I’m trying to find my own style and build in it.

Just like the unusual choices I made for my hunter, I make my engineer builds rather defensive and utterly crammed with every fun trick I can find in the kits.

Currently I remain stubborn and I actually run with 4 (yes FOUR) kits.
Life could be easier if I didn’t, and I sure have a loooong learning curve ahead.
But that’s how I like it: be a ‘cracker jack box’ stuffed with surprises instead and maybe one candy if you’re lucky. A Jack of all trades.
No other profession in this game can give me the fun of the engineer. Even though I think the mesmer is one of the most original ideas GW1 ever had… Just a shame they are a bit too strong now, otherwise they are a brilliant design too.
Still: engineer first for me.

A good tip is to start with very straight foward builds, who happen to be the strongest builds too.
Power-crit rifle build, grneadier (allthough the aiming takes practice indeed), those type of builds…
Just as you are doing now. But take them as learning curves, not necessarily as your ‘end’ build. Swap builds so you’re forced to learn another aspect. Incorporate 1 kit each time and make it a habit of using it.
Learn how those work and steadily build up.

There good builds in the sticky, and several youtube video’s too.
Optics, who is active on these forums as well, has plenty of video’s on different builds. Defenitely worth checking out.

And have fun, just that: have fun.

If you’re in WvW… don’t bother with grenades until you are able to get 30 points into explosives and get the grenadier trait. I tried it, but it seemed pretty worthless. Once I opened up the 1500 range and the extra grenade, holy cow did grenades make sense.

Right now I’m running a crit rifle build discussed here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Rifle-vs-Grenades/first#post398240

that I really enjoy. It doesn’t have the AoE of grenades/bombs but it’s more of my play style with the CCs and has some crazy burst damage. If you time the bursts right and CC to make sure your opponent can’t heal I have no trouble in sPvP against any other class, except Mesmers because this being a single target build you have to pick one of them to burn down first. I can also help out a lot in group fights especially with the vulnerability stacks. Problem is, it’s a squishy build, so I drop rather fast when a few people target me.