(edited by JESPER.5610)
Overall engi help
You only want one of the two. I prefer FT for PvP (oceanic lag+cast+travel time = very easy to miss Nades) but Nades are better for PvE, putting out more damage and hitting more players.
So just pick your favourite of the two and use your extra utility slot for some utility.
Engineers have a lot of build variety and anything with AoE is going to be great for PvE but at the end of the day damage is king in that area. Perhaps check out a Static Discharge build (Static Discharge trait in tools and pick low cooldown toolbelt skills), it’s the best burst build for Engineer that I know.
There’s nothing you can really do about PvE retaliation (it’s often non-removable right?) so just be careful there, boon striping is more other classes role than engineer too.
Rifle sd is more than a perfectly “viable” (hate that word but it fits here) alternative to either grenades/bombs or ft/eg for open world pve. I will say that if you are farming zerg events (like pavillion) you may struggle a bit with getting as many tags. You could try something like 30/10/x/20/10 (which isn’t possible til 80) as a baseline for such a hybrid with ft/grenades. It will allow you to get the grenadier trait, the cd trait for ft, deadly mixture for more damage for ft/eg and permanent swiftness and vigor. It certainly won’t produce the most possible damage as a more focused build would, but it should earn you plenty of tags. Unfortunately both the gk and the ft/eg combo really need certain traits to be truly effective in terms of maximizing their damage potential, so until you can get all the traits you need you will likely struggle in those zergs with all the level 80’s running around champion farming. As far as retaliation goes, I am assuming the largest issue is with that centaur archer guy, people just need to kill his darn spirits and strip boons (I think), not a lot you can do with it, other than be mindful when he has the retal boon on him and maybe switch up to your main hand weapon.
(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)
Okay, thanks alot.
So ill just turtle to 80 and then pick full dps grenades i think (http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/82395-guide-to-grenades-in-pve/)
Also in advance, im planning to do alot of wvw, how to deal with retal there?
Okay, thanks alot.
So ill just turtle to 80 and then pick full dps grenades i think (http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/82395-guide-to-grenades-in-pve/)Also in advance, im planning to do alot of wvw, how to deal with retal there?
Don’t zerg A more serious answer would be, if you do run in zerg vs zerg combat, you can try and target the rear spread of players since it is usually up front where the majority of the retal is going to be. Sadly the current popular “strategy” of everyone blobbing in with the melee pain train does not favor using grenades or ft auto on said blob. Your other option is of course to use slower (less individual chances to proc retal) harder hitting skills, but they will come with their own set of problems. I generally just avoid the zerg and retal is never a problem for me, but then again I find solo or small team more entertaining anyway since it’s easier to measure individual contribution.
(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)