Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone,

I just started playing this game today, and I was excited to pick my characters. My main has become this Engineer I am playing, and i’m okay with that. It’s a very fun play style, and it’s certainly enjoyable to be a ranged damage dealer, as it’s the kind of class i’m most comfortable with. I was drawn to this class, and this game, because it reminded me so much of my D&D games, especially the Artificer. The idea of a clockwork genius lobbing grenades just really appealed to me.

My question, though, is about viability. See, I am currently using two pistols. I like the attacks having two of them presents, and they have saved my life on numerous occasions. I’ve seen the attacks for rifles, and said no thanks. P/S is interesting, and could be good for survivability, but since i’m only wearing medium armor, I prefer to take my opponents out as quickly as I can, and preferably at a distance if possible. My main question is this: are two pistols viable at level 80 as a weapons choice, or should I be looking to get a shield or a rifle?

I understand that the grenade kit will override my main attacks anyway, but i’m not sure if that’s permanent, or if it needs to be activated every time. Anyone that can enlighten me would be greatly appreciated. I like the idea of grenades, and i’ve heard they are one of the best damage-wise, so i’m excited.

Any kind of advice, about the pistols, or just Engineers in general, would be wonderful. I have played many other MMOs, with WoW being the most prominent, and I played a Hunter there.

Thank you for your time.

1) The weapons you use depend on your build, mostly. Almost any offensive power (Direct damage) based build will use rifle, while almost any offensive condition (Damage over time) build will use pistol/pistol or pistol/shield.

2) Rifle is good, pistol offhand is good, shield is good. The only weapon we have that most folks universally consider “meh” is the mainhand pistol, as it deals very little damage. A Grenade Kit rotation can deal 2 to 3 times the damage of a pistol MH rotation, often to more targets since the pistol #1 explosion is somewhat small.

3) All kits work the same way. While you have it on your skill bar, you can hit that ability at any time (Even while stunned, prone, feared, dazed, or otherwise disabled) to replace your weapon abilities with kit abilities until you hit that button again or use the tilde key.

4) Small side note about survivability: most engineer bunker builds (tanky, but not necessarily full tank) are as tough if not tougher than most other classes’ bunker builds. We have the hands-down best block skill in the game, some amazing heals, powerful CC, and can survive quite a bit of punishment. Heavy armor is more of an aesthetic statement than a gameplay statement.

5) Advice to you as an engineer: Grab your kit abilities first, but learn every ability. The engineer is somewhat unique (in my experience) in that we have so many equally viable abilities and traits, such that almost every ability you have will be used at some point during your engineering “career”. Furthermore, as a side effect of this, there aren’t any real big engineer cookie-cutter builds; everyone more or less makes their own stuff for the occasion.

Pistol #4 gives you some burst (condition) damage and somewhat useful to kill mobs a little faster. Together with the snare/slow of Pistol #5 that’s why Pistol/Pistol is used by condition Engineers in WvW and PvP.
In PvE condition damage is rather bad for anything but solo content for various reasons so many Engineers don’t run condition damage, and without condition damage Pistol/Shield or Rifle are better options.

For an Engineer the shield is not only a defensive tool.
Shield #4 is a blast finisher, if you combine that with a fire field, e.g. Bomb Kit #2, you give yourself and your allies 3 stacks of Might. More information about combos:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo
Shield #4 also reflects projectiles which can be very useful against certain enemies; e.g. Young Karkas are already half-dead if you reflect their projectile spam attack. As mentioned above you can also blast it and push back foes, thus interrupting them.
Shield #5 stuns your attacker and can be thrown to interrupt your enemies. Unlike the tooltip says it’s not discharged when a melee hits you, that was changed a few months ago and the tooltip wasn’t updated.

An Engineer has the ability to rapidly switch between his different weapon sets; the advantage of this is that you have a wider array of choices which skill to use next than other professions but the disadvantage that you have to make use of it to achieve the best performance.

Maybe some useful tips about Engineer:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Engineer-PvE-little-help/first#post2992442

Perfect, both of you gave me more than adequate answers. I think i’ll grab my kits and try a pistol/shield build.

Thank you very much, I greatly appreciate it!

I prefer double pistom on my grenade build, cause of aoe damage, immobilize and slow (second, next to kit grenade #4). Also, rifles don’t look really good with magitech set.

I don’t like shield, cause I just can’t use shields overall :P

The normal weapons all have their uses but your primary damage is very likely going to come from your kits. Both the rifle and shield have blast finishers which are great given how many fields engineers can drop.

For max damage you are probably looking at grenades/bombs and for less but still good damage and more utility Flame thrower/elixir gun is a pretty fun combo.

Static discharge builds are pretty fun too and those are one of the more likely ones for you to be using your actual normal pistols or rifles.

A more compacted answer is that all the offered weapons and off hand combinations have great potential.

When i was leveling my Engi, OP i did the same as you. I came here looking for conditions, which P/P excels at. (Though you will get more dmg and utility out of a kit and p/p instead of just staying in p/p). I used the trifle for like a level. But after taking another look at it after a month or 2, in really growing to like it. Im not saying you have to use or like it, and honestly if youre doing a condi build then p/p is way better. But just keep it in the back if your head.