Guild Wars 2

I’ve said quite a few things without having much to say, but now I think I’m starting to understand why I don’t feel comfortable as an engineer. The bottom line: I’m not good enough.

I’m a pretty casual gamer. I have a full time job, I don’t play games nearly as much as I used to. I don’t have the time or energy to “work” at getting better. If it doesn’t come naturally, I lose interest.

Engineers have fun mechanics. Their weapon abilities can be fun to use. But unless you’re able to get over that learning curve, you will never do well enough to compete with other professions.

I can’t swap weapons 3 times in a chaotic fight. As another profession, sure.. I can hit ` to go back and forth 3-4 times in a long fight. But to be that good at reacting to a situation to be able to swap to a weapon, use a skill or two, swap to another, use a skill or two, swap to a third… reactions, reactions, reactions. I don’t have them. I can’t do that and the idea of it drives me nuts.

Props to everyone who can. I am clearly not an engineer. The longer I play, the more I realize .. ANet didn’t mess up when making this profession. They just made it for better skilled people.

Noooo… man. You just need to make sure you have the right tools for the job. Know what role you want your engineer to fill and then trait select skills to complement that. The class does require the player to know their skill bar and make use of it all but it’s manageable with some practice.

The situation you describe seems to be a pvp game.

I know how you feel cuz I also suck at pvp, but I don’t think this is an engineer problem as I suck in every class in every MMO in the history of everything.

That’s why I love how there’s no world pvp in GW2.

Kits shmits….

It’s possible to be an effective engineer without kits. Not everyone can be (or wants to be) a kit-swapping crazy man (or woman).

Yes, Engineer like Elementalist has a very high-skill ceiling when you consider using multiple kits.

However, you don’t have to use 4 kits. You could use 2 kits, say Med Kit and Flamethrower, and then some gadgets or elixirs. You can still be successful.

If you do want to use multiple kits, get a G13 or a MMO mouse and practice-practice-practice. I use 4 kits and can reflexively swap them with ease at this point. Leveling to 80 through PvE also helped condition me to use 4 kits.

You can see footage of crazy 4-kits tPvP here from my previous streams:
http://www.twitch.tv/lokhd/videos (sorry audio is bugged/not-working)

I do really well on my engi but I’m not a constant kit swapper, and I don’t think you have to, to be effective as an engineer.

But each spec that I use is tailored for a very specific environment.

Support spec for dungeons (elixir gun with tool belt)
Dps spec for dungeons (grenade with turrets)
Solo PvE spec (turrets with rifle)
Solo WvW spec (tanky rifle)
Dps WvW team roaming spec (tool belt / rifle)
Dps WvW keep / tower spec (grenade + pistol / shield)
Support WvW team roaming spec (elixir gun + bomb kit)
Support WvW keep / tower spec (grenade + elixir gun)
Spvp Tank Spec (bomberman)
Spvp Dps Spec (grenade / tool belt)
Spvp Support Spec (elixir / elixir gun)

I’ve got different specs for everything and depending on my needs I swap out traits and gear along with my utilities, or I respec my traits.

I’ve yet to feel that I have found any spec that I like well enough or feel is effective enough to try to use it everywhere and for everything, and none of my specs force to to swap between 2-3 kits in a rotation.

The only one that comes close is my tool belt burst build. I swap into tool kit for the block + box of nails if I am running into a keep, or the medkit if I need extra healing / condition removal. But The bulk of my abilities are my 1-5, F1-4, and then 2 utilities.

Tool kit and Medkit are more for the “OH FUDGE” moments.

Yeah, I’ve seen the whole 4-kit thing .. and I’d honestly rather not deal with all that. From what I’ve seen, running only 1 other weapon kit simply isn’t enough because a weapon kit is not as good as a weapon swap that any other (not ele) profession gets. That is to say, an engineer needs to be able to swap to 2 other kits (not incl med) in order to compete/surpass the capabilities of another profession. I do not find the flamethrower or elixer gun to be anywhere as near well-rounded as rifle/pistol and they cannot stand on their own. This is where the class has lost me.

I’m fine with a weapon swap. Absolutely. But:

1) Can’t swap with the weapon swap button. Means I gotta remember what kit I put on what utility button.
2) Can’t seem to get away with only 1 additional kit. That single kit can’t seem to fill the role of a weapon that any other profession would have gotten. I’m really not interested in needing to swap to 2+ kits depending on the situation. Not only do I feel like it would be spreading the profession too thin by being able to do damage in 10 different ways, but it’s a whole new level of micromanagement and reactions I’m simply not prepared for.
3) … thought I had a 3. Maybe something with the lack of non-kit weapon choices.

I guess I just don’t see how anyone can be successful with less than 2 weapon kits.

I guess you didn’t read what I said. You absolutey can use 1 or 2 kits and still be successful. Many people do.

No, weapon kits are not meant to stand on their own, as far as damage goes, with weapons. (Actually I lied, grenades and bombs usually do with the right gear). This may however change if kits ever scale with weapon stats.

It really isn’t that hard to remember what you bound a weapon kit to. It’s all muscle memory and repetition. Just level through PvE, it’s a good way to learn. If you’re immediately jumping into The Mists and sPvP and trying to learn, you’re going to fail.

Have you tried any of the tool belt burst builds, elixir pistol builds, or bomberman / grenade builds (where you stay in grenade or bomb kit full time) ?

> Necromancers Suck

> Ranger sucks and is too bland

> warrior is so boring

> Engineer Sucks

> Elementalists are beyond underpowered

I wish every forum had moderation like smogon. Instalock all repetitive threads

I never said engineer sucks. Not once.kitten

Lol.. really didn’t expect that to get kitten’d .. it wasn’t a swear in the slightest.

Lol.. really didn’t expect that to get kitten’d .. it wasn’t a swear in the slightest.@Karast: Not extensively

There are some very good, very kit-intensive (and therefore swap-heavy) builds for the engineer atm. But those are not the only builds available.

You could go for the simpler Rifle-toolbelt builds (e.g. Rifle grenade and it’s variants). Here’s an example:
Medkit
Toolkit
grenade kit
Some utility skill, typically Utility Goggles

Traits are, with some variation: at least 10 in tools for static discharge (usually 15 for inertial converter), typically 20 or more in rifle, the rest is dealers choice. Power/Precision/crit gear.

Your spike is: Utility goggles, analyze and then throw wrench, grenade barrage, blunderbuss, jump shot, overcharged shot in some order (depends on situation). If everything hits, and with glass cannon gear (precision/power amulet in spvp), you can burst for around 20k. 5-7k from grenade barrage, 4-5k from throw wrench, 4k+ from static discharges, 6k+ from the 3 rifle skills. You also have a base crit chance of 53% so your auto attack packs a punch.

Disadvantage to all of the above: You’re a glass cannon, you use your stun breaker as part of the burst for +20% crit, your only survival skills are gearshield (toolkit) and flash grenade (grenade kit), neither of which work particularly well with this build.

A popular choice is to replace one of the kits with personal battering ram, rocket turret, or rifle turret.
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Another simple build is the pistol-pistol burning build which relies on pistol 4 and rocket boots toolbelt (typically combined with another toolbelt skill such as grenade barrage, or incendiary ammo). With proper gear, this 2-3 skill combo can do around 10-15k burning damage+raw damage, while leaving you with1-2 utility skills+ relative freedom with traits.
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On another note, swapping between multiple weapons/kits may seem daunting at first. It certainly was something I avoided early on, but you get used to it surprisingly quickly. If you are interested in those builds, I’d start off with something easy like a grenade kit build. Learn that well. Than learn a bomb kit build. After a while put the two together, you may surprise yourself at how well you do.

You guys have given me some things to think about. Absolutely swapping between 3+ weapon sets is daunting. Don’t know if I’ll ever be up for that. Rifle is fun though.. grenades are fun. Rocket boots are fun. Maybe I’ll just play with that stuff for now and stop worrying so much about how I can fit the flamethrower into my arsenal.

Besides knowing your skill bars and what to do in a certain situations, key bindings will make or break a high maintenance class. A gaming mouse could help, but I prefer my cheap alternative. Here is a list of keybindings that I use (for engineer) that I believe increase my mobility, dps and kit swapping speed..which leads to better survivability. Oh and before the list remember to alternate between L & R simultaneous mouse button movement and W key while using these.

R (or Q , E) replaces ‘5’
Alt + 1, 2,3, Q,E,R used in place of F1-F3. I like heals on Q and E for grenade barrage.
left Shift + 1, 2,3,Q,E,R replaces ‘6-0’

This setup allows all you to reach all of your hotkeys without ever having to move your middle finger more than 1 key away from W.

I would suggest trying a rifle / tool belt burst build or a p/p or p/s elixir build before rerolling.

They are my two favorite builds and while they use kits they are not heavy on kit swapping.

For the rifle build I like to go 10 30 0 0 30 or 10 30 0 10 20

I use a mix of power percision crit berzerker gear, and power percision condition damage rampager gear.

I use it with medkit / healing turret – tool kit – portable battering ram – elixir s / utility goggles / rocket boots / rifle turret / flamethrower

(you can tweak the traits and gear to do a lot of different things like using juggernaut and flamethrower to build might, but I typically stick with a CC break or rifle turret)

The key traits are the burn on crit from explosives, the decrease rifle cool downs + 10% rifle damage, and static discharge from tools.

The pistol elixir build is either 20 , 30, 0, 20, 0 or 10, 30, 0, 30, 0 or 10, 20, 0 30, 10

The core of the build is to use rampager gear with the burn on crit, cleansing elixirs, improved rifle / pistol range, and reduced rifle / pistol cool downs.

I take elixir H, elixir B, elixir U, and flamerthrower, although sometimes I’ll use elixir S in place of B or U.

The optional specs give you static discharge or more condition duration and I like the static discharge spec the most. I’ll trade out elixir B and get tool kit or pbr for some burst.

But you pretty much just use the weapon abilities + utility abilities in these spec’s. With practice they work really well and I at least find them to be fun.

You might give them a go and see how you like them.

I did re-work most of the hotkeys. I bound 6 7 8 9 0 to Q E R F T. Works pretty well. I had rebound the F keys to Z X C V but I kept reaching up and pressing them anyways.. so I figured I’d just leave them. Not too hard to reach.

I usually run a turret-specialist engineer with a pistol and shield. Works pretty well – would work better with Deployable Turrets working properly.

Tried an Elixir build, but the various bugged cooldown traits bogged it down. Haven’t tried specializing in nonspecialization (kits) yet, though.

Have to agree that handing multiple kits is a handful and I have nowhere near perfecting that art, but it is whole lot fun. Usually I like to use explosives, grenades and elixir gun. Sometimes it is just fun to wear my Med Kit (Stimulant), strap on my Slick Shoes, down some Elixir B and just in case of problems keep my Elixir C ready and just run. So much possibilities what it comes to build that it is truly fun profession to play even if you don’t know all the ins and outs like me.