New Player...Are Engi's Fun??
OHH kitten YEAH THEY"RE FUN!
Role:
PVE: We’re the sustained vulnerability with grenades, we also do good burst damage with EG/FT/Rifle. We have the best immob lockdown though only really useful in fractals and like 1 dungeon. Aside from that our strength is we can fill in most anywhere. Even meta dps build you can keep like 9stacks of might on average. We can slot Elixir U for Reflect/projectile defense, could even trait fortified turrets for it. We have unblockable CC. We have a lot of possible CC. We can stealth with bombkit/Elixir S. We can also blind with bombkit/grenade/ft/pistol. We have blocks/evades in abundance relatively. Perma swiftness with a single trait.
TL: DR we are the universal cog, we can fill any gap in a team and get us through. Lots of skills to learn but a master engi is flipping awesome. They won’t show up in the record run scene, but for casual runs they are incredibly nice.
PVP: Turret for bunker, Condi or Celestial for more brawler type thing (not full bunker but tanky enough to survive a bit and possibly 2/3v1 for a while at least), SD Zerker build is fun too.
DPS: PVE we’re 3rd behind Ele/Thief. Lots of condi damage even in power builds (assassin’s/zerker gear is where it’s at)
PVP: we can do some nasty burns with both condi/power damage builds, SD zerker build can be fun to burst people down. Condi HGH build is pretty neat to burst people down but long recharge. Overall… we do fine on DPS, on the higher end as far as I’m concerned.
As you level Bombkit + Speedy Kits are your big priorities. Once 80 you can open Grenadier stats, then Rifle/EG/Nade/FT 66002 build is where it’s at. Check metabattle they have them listed there, but you should learn all skills not just stick always with the same thing, that defeats the big strength of engi with the flexibility.
Yup, my favorite class to play so far.
I’ll add the following: Learn how skill combos work, if you don’t already. Engies have lots of blast finishers, and will be getting MORE soon, and engies have access to most of the combo fields in the game, so leaving the right fields or knowing which fields to blast is pretty key for team play.
On that note one of the lesser known engie skills: group stealth. Pile a bunch of blast finishers into a smoke field (which you can leave via a smoke bomb on the bomb kit, or and overcharged flame turret) and you can give enough stealth to compete with a shadow refuge. (Though you need to use all your skills to do it, instead of just one) It’s really handy in a group with no thief, and if you DO have a thief, you can blast each other’s smoke fields for really high stealth uptime. Thief with shadow refuge, shortbow and smoke screen, engie with extra blasts and mesmer with the new double outgoing stealth trait might very well be a new speedclear party option with the ability to just skip half the stinkin’ dungeon.
Grenades are the current PvE/Dungeon meta for high DPS and AOE vuln stacks. This is unlikely to change even with the new specialization traits, though we might get some stronger alternate builds. The ol 66002 build is gonna be buffed to a 66006 build with an even higher crit rate than the old version and extra conditions to boot. However, grenades don’t auto attack, are notoriously physically uncomfortable to use while running on a keyboard set-up. You really do need to spam 1111111111111, and if you’re a clicker, that will actually hurt your DPS if you have to keep moving your mouse between the skill icon and the target with every use. I bought a gaming mouse, which makes grenades much more comfortable and fun to use. I highly recommend one.
Lastly, while Turrets are known for being nearly useless in PVE. They’re actually pretty good for solo leveling. If you’re outnumbered, a turret or two can draw the extra aggro away from you while you kill off the extra mobs. It’s saved me quite a few times, and still does if I try to solo events sometimes.