Guild Wars 2

Question to all – I’m fairly new to GW2 (started around New Years) and when the promo was going on I bought a second account and made an engineer on it, so I’m pretty new to engineer too (currently 45). Am I committing a faux pas at events? For PVE/soloing I throw up turrets for events (heart questing I don’t usually need them), and every time I will throw up turrets and there will be a group of people that will then rush forward and kill everything out of range of my turrets. I’m not parking myself and hiding behind the turrets either, I’m getting in range of mobs and moving around, cycling between flamethrower and e-gun depending on the fights. I then find myself having to run way out to be able to get any kill credit.
I recently did the event in Gendarran Fields where the waves of animals come out of the arena and me and 3 others were within the heal radius of my turret and this level 80 guardian just runs up and kills everything the second they came out of the gate, before they get in range to the rest of us. I thought it was pretty jerky, but it’s been happening a lot so it made me wonder if I’m just doing things wrong.

Am I doing something considered “wrong” by the majority or am I having the bad luck of getting on a megaserver with trolls? I’ve read up on how to be a dps engineer (flamethrower/egun/grenade kit) and it seems pretty straightforward except it’s useless for soloing PVE since everything dies so fast just to rifle AA. After trying the dps rotation I just went back to popping turrets/flamethrower for soloing.

‘Wrong’ is a pretty harsh word in open world PvE, you could certainly employ easier methods of getting things done, switching away from turrets and towards mobile mob-tagging abilities like nades, flamethrower, bombs, whatever tickles your fancy, that’d be ideal.

For PvE event tagging nothing beats FT spam in my experience (although I haven’t farmed PvE events in a long time). It’s our answer to Guardian Staff. I know exactly what you mean about everything dying before you can get a hit off, watching all of the mobs die before your grenades hit the ground. Don’t worry about a DPS rotation so much if there’s a group doing the event and you’re having concerns about not getting kill credit. For regular mobs and even sometimes vets depending on the group they go down so fast It’s not worth doing much else besides FT. For longer fights and champs feel free to practice using your full kitten nal (and rotation).

As for PvE usage of Supply Crate I’d say to probably reserve it for stationary fights that are going to last long enough to benefit from the turrets. You’re going to have to use your judgement there.

Turrets just aren’t really very…good. At all. As somebody who used a Turreteer build almost exclusively from release in PvE, it really doesn’t do a ton (but it’s more challenging, I find, to work with the limited tools than to walk around with three kits and remember which button combination does what you want). Quick tip: Healing Turret’s really just a Water Field bomb. Place it, overcharge it, and either detonate it or pick it up, so you can have it available and not feel chained to it.

That said, it’s not a faux pas to use Turrets, and it’s not trolls completing them in a way that Turrets can’t contribute to, either. A lot of people have been playing since release, and a lot of old content has grown stagnant; instead of playing how Anet might (or might not) have intended, people have found the fastest/most efficient/most effective ways to clear events as quickly as possible to get the rewards. That’s all it is – somebody playing to clear events as quickly as they can. Turrets, being static objects in a dynamic game, don’t always work very well for that.
If you’d really like to use Turrets to get contribution, place them near the spawn points, so they can tag monsters before the monsters are dead.

Vierala.6714:

Am I doing something considered “wrong” by the majority or am I having the bad luck of getting on a megaserver with trolls? I’ve read up on how to be a dps engineer (flamethrower/egun/grenade kit) and it seems pretty straightforward except it’s useless for soloing PVE since everything dies so fast just to rifle AA. After trying the dps rotation I just went back to popping turrets/flamethrower for soloing.

You really should stick to bombs while leveling. They have the least trait dependency and have the hardest hitting auto attack. This makes them very reliable early on while you’re still getting the hang of everything—especially when the grenade kit isn’t yet reaching its full potential.

I also think it’s important to establish that just because the dungeon meta recommends using the grenade kit and elixir gun, what makes them useful within instances doesn’t always translate well into the open world.

I have to follow up on what Chaith said: open world content doesn’t really have right or wrong specs, at least until you get into higher level content like Tequatl, Wurm, and the Silverwastes.

But I don’t really recommend turrets, either way. You want to focus on mobility in the open world, and turrets demand a play style that is very much the antithesis to that. Take Speedy Kits and roam about with bombs and your wrench. Just have fun with it.

If there are people there capable of killing that quickly, just swap to your FT, run in and try to get a tag in on the enemy. It’s the unfortunate nature of Open World PVE, where it’s typically easy and zerged. Things just die so quickly your only focus should be on getting some damage for credit. Think of it this way, if the enemy has 30k hp, and your first tick of flamethrower hits for 300, get 100 people doing the same and yeah it’ll die from that first tick. That’s not exactly how it actually works (there’s scaling) but i think it gets the point across.

When things don’t die instantly, then yes alternatives are available, and turrets aren’t terrible but their lack of mobility makes them quite limited in use.

you arent doin it wrong. you arent being trolled. but now you understand the fundamental flaws of turrets, and you can move on to something a little better. try bombs or flamethrower and be the guy spawn camping the mobs instead of the guy who thinks hes getting trolled.

Thanks all for the tips! I love how varied the playstyle is for engineer.

turrets are very very situational in PVE. used correctly are a powerfull tool.

how ever for world events you are better of using kits / elixirs for world events due to the fast pace movement and spawn locations of mobs. grenades and flame thrower are fantastic for tagging a lot of mobs. bomb kit also very good for close combat fights.

and relax you got a lot to learn. youtube has some nice guides for you. and do nto worry at all. engineer has the most “complex” rotations for guildwars 2. other mmos such as aion gives u like 5-6 skill bars worth of skills u need to manage :S so don’t let the kit + tool belt get you down.

learn to use kit swapping and toolbelt skills in combo with each other and you are on the right track.