Guild Wars 2

I have a 80 Thief and a mesmer in the 30s. I quit a couple of months back, needed a break and had to move. I started back up and am looking for a new class to take to 80 and start working on Fractals, sPvP, dungeons, ect.
I have heard engineers can be tricky, which I like, so no worries on that. But, any thing to know out of the box about dealing with lower levels, or just general info would be awesome!

Thanks guys,
Nightbreaker

the way engineers are right now i cannot in good conscience recommend one to you for doing dungeons and fractals.

i would say that more then any other class (including ranger and necro) we are the least fleshed out and bring the least to a group setting.

elementalist is a fairly complex class that has a number of different builds and means of play that can bring a plethora of utility and damage to a group.

i hate to do this on the engineers own page but, i would have to recommend to new players that you role an elementalist over an engineer in so far as dungeons and fractals are concerned.

that aside if you want to go for just personal fun i would recommend the engineer because it is by far one of the most fun classes there is.

If you want to play an Engineer, just play one. The only thing to unanimously be advised against (for the most part) are Turrets.

I’ll second what Fiorello says. Especially because of your interest in Fractals. Engineers have a steep learning curve, but once you master kit swapping, it becomes a lot of fun to play. To be fully effective requires a bit of finesse and never running on auto-pilot. The problem with Fractals is that we don’t offer enough to a group for the higher levels, partially because of our long list of bugs.

That all said, I really enjoy playing my Engineer. She’s effective in dungeons with the right build and armor set (I go full Cleric for survivability). You can trait the Bomb Kit to heal which means constant small amounts of healing. It’s great to jump into the forray alongside a warrior or guardian and supplement their own survival with bombs and the Super Elixir on the Elixir Gun. The damage we dish out isn’t too bad.

In WvW, the Tool Kit helps us out a lot. The magnet (pulls a player toward you) has a long rage (1200 I think) which is useful. Also, despite the quasi-nerf against grenade damage, they are also very handy in either defending or assaulting a tower/keep. With Elixir S (which is a stunbreak that gives 3 secs of invuln), our survivability is really good. There are also a few traits that you can spec into that automatically drinks an Elixir S and recharges healing skills at 25% health (used back to back, that 6 seconds of invuln plus a heal or two). We can also grab perma-swiftness with only 10 trait points spent into one line.

So where does it all fall apart? We’re just not great at anything. When I’m running with a group, it’s awesome. When I’m solo, it’s slow and miserable. For as many conditions as we can inflict, I never have the spare points/armor slots for condition damage. So, my conditions are a bit of a joke. Damage is also very difficult to sustain. There are some bursty builds out there, but they come at great cost with long cooldowns. (I suppose that’s the point of a burst build, though it seems to be magnified with the Engineer.)

If you do go for an Engineer, don’t even look at the turrets. Supply Crate is our best Elite skill, but mostly for the stun and healing packs that drop. Turrets go down fast (and traiting into them isn’t nearly worth giving up other traits). Having 3 turrets out at once, which the Supply Crate does, is useful sometimes, but they get stamped out so fast by AoE. Once they start fixing some of our bugs, things will hopefully turn around.

In PvP:

Check out the Static Discharge trait in tools. It can pull off some really powerful spikes.

Rifle is great for spiking.

Pistol/Pistol is great for condition builds. Try switching between grenade kit, bomb kit and rifle for a crap ton of conditions.

In WvW:

Tool kit has a skill that can yank people from 1,200 range, which is great for zerg battles and walls.

Grenade kit is great for destroying things when attacking a keep.

Toss Elixir R is great for reviving multiple downed players in tough zerg battles.

In PvE:

If you need damage, I always go Pistol/Pistol with grenade kit and static discharge.

Some other players like to go with an Elixir build that utilizes the trait HGH, giving you two stacks of might when you drink an elixir and one stack of might when you throw it. This combined with the pistol shots piercing trait can get out a lot of condition and direct damage.

This also goes well with the Juggernaut trait, which lets you gain might as long as you have your flamethrower kit out. Great damage there.

Try using Kit Refinement (Trait) with Elixir Gun. Switching to Elixir gun causes Super Elixir to happen around you. It has a 20 second recharge. Elixir gun also has Super Elixir, allowing you to have multiple of these at once, or have one up constantly. Mix this with healing turret and you can have some great regeneration on this party without even any investment. Not to mention, Super Elixir removes a condition of impact (It’s not listed).

Notes:

If you run grenade kit, make sure you have the Grenadier trait on.

Don’t underestimate Oil Slick. The tool belt skill for it says that it only doubles your speed, but it actually does that AND causes you to ignore all slowing effects that don’t stun you, including the slowing effect from being in battle.

Deployable Turrets sounds great…it’s bugged. It just doesn’t work. Don’t use it. I know, I know…sad.

In PvE and dungeon settings, we’re generally not AMAZING, but we deliver our own small noticable buffs, such as permanent 15+ stacks vulnerability with Grenade builds, and a near permanent regeneration with healing turret.

I strongly disagree with the hate on turrets.
Turrets are horrible in dungeons, but amazing when leveling. You can literally leave a rocket+rifle turret up and they’ll deal with mobs entirely on their own, which means they protect you and draw aggro, or you can be double-offensive and just plant your turrets in one area while you destroy another area.

Our damage is outright terrible. I’m not over exaggerating when I suggest buffing pretty much every of our damage outputs by 33-50%. It’s that bad.

All in all, we’re a gimped, less effective elementalist. Everything we can do, they can do twice as good.

My Grenade barrage with static discharge deals 12k damage in under a second (With analyze helping it). Then mix that with about 1.5k damage with grenade, 2k damage + bleeding with Shrapnel Grenade and 2k damage + chilled with Frost Grenade. I blind, confuse and poison with other stuff. Mix that with area healing and retaliation from Elixir Gun + Kit refinement + extra regen from Healing Turret and my Elixir Gun’s tool belt skill. Not to mention I could call in a supply drop and have two healing turrets at once. So that’s huge amounts of regen, huge amounts of condition removal (From super Elixir and skill 3 of Elixir Gun) and great damage.

We do just fine in dungeons.

Thanks for all the responses guys. Seems like the potential is there, just not quite there. Maybe I will just play one and by time I’m 80 they fix everything, hah! (Hopeful thinking ).

-Nightbreaker

For PvE,

I first used my necro in FOtM, getting it to something like leveling 16. It was pretty easy and I could help out my allies with wells and conditions removal.

Now that I ran some FotM (level 10 now), I have a really harder time to run FotM. I really miss my Deathshroud Especially since I’m a power engineer, I have to go in melee range to do a lot of damage, but I can’t survive a lot.

I have to spec multi kit with kit refinement to be able to survive a bit, but still.

Engineer in FotM seems to be a lot harder then my necromancer.

However, Engineer are still a pretty cool and fun to play! Leveling is easy and farming with DS or grenade or FT is awesome!

Every class gets broken down while leveling into 2-20, 21-60, 61-80. These map to your gear having 1, 2, or 3 stats. Engi, and in my experience Mesmer, benefit more in the 61-80 ranges than most. Keeping that in mind…

2-20 – Turrets are quite good. I hate that you out-level the content designed for you at these levels. If you find nothing to do just switch over to another starting area.

21-60 – Start playing with a build you think you might like. Bombs start to become good in this range for kiting mobs. Mobs chase, the bombs are just behind you — match made in heaven (for you; hell for them). Plenty to do in this level range. Go to another area if you don’t like your current jungle; plains; snow.

61-80 – Here you can feel your build grabbing traction. Do dungeons to learn if it’s any good. (Bombs get better to 80. Grenades but for #1 get better to 80. Power or condition builds get better to 80. Now — by better I mean same difficulty all the way up since mobs are getting harder too so don’t expect that you’ll just be pulling away from the leveling content.

80 -PvE good. PvP … I don’t play so can’t say. WvW good. FotM marginal.

Engi is not a power build. Crit% and CritDmg are not on the same trait line. All classes in that shape run into this. Condition on the other hand while good in PvE and good++ in WvW don’t work well in FotM because of the need to kill things NOW. You’ll have to decide if the play-style for you outpaces the “I just wish Engi was an X”. (Fill in the X for whatever class you might think Engi should be.)