Guild Wars 2

I had to stop playing a month or so after Guild Wars 2 came out due to my PC dying. I recently was able to get a new PC and I am very excited to get back. So I downloaded the game, patched up, loaded in…and realized I had NO clue what I was doing.

I don’t know what my gear is, how it works, or what build I had/have.

I don’t know what gear and build I should be using (PvE, I don’t want to get into PvP just yet.)

I don’t know what any of the new content is (even after looking it up a little…might be because I need to actually beat the Personal Story but I digress).

I’m just completely and utterly lost. I’ve looked around the forums, the wiki and…I just need help.

What should I be doing as an Engineer for PvE? I read both Dual Pistols (Which I really liked but IIRC when I quit it was awful compared to Rifle/Flamethrower/Grenades) and a Flamethrower build are good, but I have no clue which build is ‘better’. What gear should I be getting? I just don’t know. Help!

Depends. Do you wanna do the most damage possible (or perhaps sacrifice a small portion of damage in favor of more blinds/cc/etc), or do you want something relaxed and easy?

‘Cause there’s a skill floor, and a skill ceiling on engineer, and the moment people start spouting pistol/pistol with HGH, that’s around the skill cabinets. If they talk about berserker kit juggling with acid bomb / grenades / flame blast / rifle skills, that’s when you start having to watch your head for the nails sticking through the skill ceiling.

I’d like to start off simple to begin with, at least until I re-learn how to play.

I’d like to be able to help groups. I don’t know if max damage or CC would do that more (I guess depending on the group?)

Are we talking about leveling up? If you’re dying, don’t let it trouble you—probably just means you’re in an area a few levels above you and/or your gear is quite a few levels below you. As long as your gear isn’t too outdated, you can play however you want as you level up. See huge numbers, juggle a ton of skills, be an invincible rock, etc. Same goes for new content, personal story, etc—just choose whatever you like to do and do it.

If you’re already at level 80 and you want to “gear up,” maybe focus on doing dungeons or leveling leatherworking and jewelry. Alternatively, find ways to make a lot of money and buy what you need. Probably the most important thing for PvE gear is to try to complete the daily achievements if at all possible.

Edit: for helping groups in PvE, you probably don’t want to focus on cc because you’ll be knocking mobs away from people’s attacks too much. But there are some nice supporty builds with elixir gun or bomb kit or both. Bombs are also fantastic for leveling and not difficult to use. Control can be pretty huge in PvP though.

Well I would say use dual pistols to level up since you like them, you would probably enjoy the game more that way. To use them effectively though search for armor with condition damage. And every ten or so levels you should be buying a new set of armor at trading post, its very cheap there and makes the game easier.

Edit: Deleting all that, don’t wanna scare you with a wall of text.

Try out different kits, hopefully you’ll realize why which ones are bad and which ones are good. While levelling, I highly encourage bomb kit up until 60 – the smoke field and the heavy hitting, fast damage from the auto attack do wonders.

Contact me in game and I can explain a world to you though. But again, I’m afraid I might intimidate you out of the class’ potential.

You won’t intimidate me. I had already read that before you deleted it, and Engi is my baby. I had my heart on playing it from the beginning. My Engi is already max level, I just need to know what to do now.

Sorry for not making that clear in my first post. I’ve already leveled, back before my PC died, I just need help in the now.

Skrusti doing next week I will upload atleast the next two videos with commentary about the very basics of the Engineers (allready got weapon and weapon kits covered) and the next two is gonna be remaining Utility skills and Traits, and I’m gonna follow that up with a movie about how to make your own builds and which stats to pick for what!
I’m to lazy to write such a long text of wall to explain all that when working on the videos, but if you still need the answears in 1-2 weeks, check them out for some information! And you can allways PM me if you need more information ect

@amadeus, are u able to tell me if on-crit conditions such as sharp shooter have an ICD? Trying to get an understanding of jus how important precision is.

I am! Sharpshooter and Precise Sights don’t have an ICD, but Incendiary Powder have one, so you can see it on the trait if it have one ore not!
All the “on crit X effect happens” sigils all have an (shared) ICD, which most of the time stand on the sigil how long is!

Personal I run with 40% crit chance, that’s about enough for me to allways triggering Icendiary Powder when it’s off CD and my Sigil, I haven’t done any math on it, just game experince, and since I mix a good bit of power into my builds and often have 20 points in tools the extra power damage I can dish out this way (2.5k Posion volly crits ect) can help on putting pressure on people!

Some hints from me would be (esp. if you like events):

- Berserker gear (power,prec,crit dmg) is often a good idea since you don’t run into the current condition caps, so perhaps try to do some daily events to get money for dmg trinkets.
Oh but to edit: I also have the feeling mixing in some condition damage is not too bad for a lot of weapons. We get a lot from might stacks and the mixed nature for example of grenades allows us to go this hibrid way. But for real min/maxing full zerker will prob. win.

- There are three stat-‘kinds’ of armor (and other stuff) at the orr tempels
http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-templegod-karma-armor-sets/
and you can mix / minmax them (only the runes will not fit then). Perhaps use your karma for some of them.

- In terms of kits/weapons you can start with a kit you like and you will realize that there is a short period of time where you used most of your skills exept the auto attack.
Try to fill this window with pistol, rifle or an other kit. For example grenade 2-4 (or4,3,2) -> pistol 2-4(or 3,2,4 what fits you most) and repeat. And since we also don’t have a cooldown on the kitswap, try to find more combos or look them up

- IF you want grenades concider the ?fast-cast? option in the option menu. you’ll miss the green mark on the ground but you just need to press the button once.

- For events with lots of mobs use a weapon/kit with AOE to tag as much mobs as possible for more loot.

But most of all try to find the build / playstyle your happy with. If spamming grenades is not fun for you don’t do it. To test a build you can always go to the heart of the mist and build/gear for free and at least test it at the dummys and pvp guys. Hopefully this helps and you read something new

So I kind of sort of think I know what I’m doing now. I just need to find an active guild and people willing to run dungeons with me to get gear. Thank you guys for all your help!

Okay, start by increasing your gear and running explorables. Greens are good enough for explorables really, just farm for an hour an southsun cove (go to the guy marked by a little boat on the map in LA) and sell the drops and you should have a full lvl 80 set.

Once you’ve farmed for a while start gearing up, either by selling spoils or with tokens from the explorables (which btw is the harder version of storymode in dungeons). Also, you can buy lvl 80 exotics with karma points in Orr – Major events such as the god shrines (Dwayna Balthazar etc) spawn the NPC’s that sell them.

Now it’s time to pick a build. Now, I don’t know what you want to be, tell me what you wanna do with your battles and I can help you further. You can also look builds up on google or indeed this very board.

I advice joining a guild for lvl 80 content. As for how to effectively fight, it comes with practice.