Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

I’m still very new to the game and I wanted to play an Engineer as soon as I saw several of them in-game using their unique gadgets. I just hit level 11 last night, but my first few levels were quie frustrating compared to the super easy Guardian, Warrior and Ranger. Even Necro has been much easier for me than Engineer.

I really want Flamethrower to be my default PVE weapon. I am EXTREMELY frustrated at the lack of auto-attack on Grenades and Bombs, so I want to steer clear of those even thought they may do more damage.

My problem with flamethrower though is that enemies still get close enough to pound on me a while before they finally die. So I guess I want step by step instructions on how to safely/efficiently use Flamethrower at level 11. I put my first trait point into Firearms btw.

What I am using right now are 2 Malign Pistols with Sigils of Agony? (the one that accumulates +5 condition damage). This seemed best because of such things as bleeding/poison/burning that pistols + FT creates. But it seems that they are NOT adding 125 condition damage with 25 stacks at this level. Are these “scaled” in some way at lower levels? If so, where is a link to what levels they will do more damage at? At this level should I use sigils of bloodlust instead, and do those affect the flamethrower damage?

So should I start with pistols, let them get close, use blowtorch, drop glue puddle, then pull out the flamethrower (since thy’re hopefully burning by this point). Should I use the tool belt ability that makes my next 3 attacks cause burning on the very first attack?

What stat should I be looking for in gear to kill things the quickest? Power, Condition Damage, or Precision?

Lastly, what other abilities compliment flamethrower the best? I am Charr, so I have had some success with Schrapnel Mine (causes cripple, which is nice), and also Rifle Turrets.

Thanks very much for your advice. I REALLY appreciate it.

1) While levelling, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the specific numerical values of things, other than to compare “this gives me more condition damage” or “this has a higher toughness bonus”. I doubt that there is much data on lower-level scalings of stats, though I may be wrong.

2) Flamethrower works with everything. I personally find it most fun with raw damage builds, which have a stat priority of power > precision > critical damage > else. However, it is a highly versatile kit in terms of stats.

3) Flamethrower shines most at higher levels. Putting 20 points into Firearms for the Juggernaut trait will provide it a massive power jump, as it now grants you significant amounts of power and condition damage while you have it out, and 20 points in Alchemy gives you the Deadly Mixture trait which makes it deal 15% more direct damage. Right now, your most damaging kit will be Bomb Kit, which has amazing power scaling without any traits whatsoever. Flamethrower’s greatest virtue at lower level would be its autoattack being such a large AoE. Its number 2 skill is highly damaging, and its blind is handy as well.

4) Once you get the 0/20/0/20/0 start to your build, elixirs (Especially will be the most synergistic with flamethrower. Until then, there really isn’t a best or worst.

5) FT Toolbelt should be used just before you start attacking with your FT, it’ll apply the three stacks rather quickly and give the rest of your FT attack the 10% damage buff.

Some general advice: your dodge roll is your best friend. Use it and abuse it. You should be able to easily solo any normal mob (and most veteran mobs) your level through dodging their attacks and generally keeping out of reach. You can attack and use abilities while moving, so it’s possible to circlekite with any non-melee weapon. FT is rather odd in that it has greater range than melee but shorter range than any other ranged weapon, so if you have swiftness you can easily circlekite any melee mob to death without taking any damage.

@fourhim: There is an autoattack on Bombs, fyi.

Anyway, at early levels, Condition Damage is definitely not a good way to do things. You simply will not have the traits and the %Condition duration through Explosives to have significant enough impact on your DOTs.

Added to that, you’re attempting a Condition build on Flamethrower – whose primary DPS is Power based and whose only Condition component is Napalm and the 60sec CD Incendiary Ammunition.

P/P might work – at levels 60+ when you finally have some Master level + traits to work with and you can unlock Coated Bullets – but until then, Power builds are the way to go with low levels.

By the way, I hit level 80 entirely off the back of White items and karma Fine armour and weapons. The most important thing is to have gear that is at your level . Even having trinkets that are a few levels behind will make your Time to Kill (TTK) seem excessive.

Consider realigning your gear to be more power based. You can see that this is in fact the way Arenanet intended levelling to be done, in fact, when you visit the Weapon vendors and all their armour and weapons for the White rarity are all Power (then Power + Precision, then Power, Precision, Crit damage at later levels)

• In short, you can play Condition Engi at low levels, but expect a lot of sweat, pain and misery until you get proper Condition damage gear.
• Don’t bother trying to use FT for its Condition damage. It’s primarily a Power-based weapon, and its Burn is for the ancillary bonus of +10% damage on the FT1.
• Condition damage downscaling is a killer.
• Engineer is all about kiting. Get used to it. Kiting enemies with Bomb Kit, Kiting with FT, kiting with GK, kiting with Rifle when your SD procs are all on CD. It doesn’t stop, so you may as well exploit it – your best damage is at close range.

For Flamethrower, consider comboing it with Elixir Gun, which will give you a Blast Finisher, Stunbreak, HoT light field and Cripple to kite foes better for FT1.
P/P will also help – Blowtorch will guarantee that your FT1 is doing bonus 10% at all times; but really, you want to be using Rifle if you want to kill things quickly.

Turrets are bad. Like, really, really bad. Their firing rates are bugged, their AI is shonky, and at lower levels, their HP is really terrible so they’ll get 2-3 shot depending on what mobs you fight.
The only turrets that are good are Healing Turret, and Rifle Turret for the Static Discharge proc and the Blast finisher. You can try making them work, but why be immobile and tied to long cooldowns if your turrets die?

WRT Sigils of Bloodlust vs Sigils of Agony – I’m pretty sure you mean Sigil of Corruption ; because Agony is a Bleed on crit proc.
Bloodlust is infinitely superior to Corruption at lower levels, especially with FT as it is Power based.

WRT Rotations:
There are no set rotations for the Engi. It’s all about improvisation.

For FT, you can start in it, FT1 and kite mobs together, FT2 for the AOE Blast, then fight them within the Napalm field with FT5. FT3 them away if you’re getting antsy about low health.
Drop EG5 and heal up if you need to. EG4 your Napalm field, by the way. 3 stacks of Might is incredibly significant at low levels.

Your Weapon skills can be ancillary, especially with Pistol mainhand.
Use it for the Static Shot and the Poison Dart volley at sub 600 range, Glue Shot and Blowtorch when needed, but otherwise, stow it for the FT. Pistol 1 is terrible.

If running Rifle, Rifle 2, Rifle 5 to close the gap, Rifle 3 in the face for delicious burst, then swap to FT/EG to finish off. If you’re getting antsy about your health, Rifle 4 them away or FT5 then EG4 away.

As for the rest, I’m sure you can figure it out yourself.

If you want easy levelling, run Rifle and Bomb Kit with Healing Turret, with Rocket Boots to zip around and some other utility.

• It’s power based – good for levelling.
• It has a ton of combo fields and finishers – teaches mechanics.
• It’s positionally demanding – teaches mechanics
• And it’s highly mobile, which is great for map completion.

Don’t over-analyze things too hard. You’re very new to the game—concentrate on finding simple, effective pairs of skills, like using one blind followed by one damaging skill. Make sure you have level 10 armor. Don’t pull too many mobs at once.

Bomb kit is probably the single best leveling tool we have, and autoattack does work on it as Mon mentioned. Engineers have a million ways to keep mobs off of them. Focus on teaching yourself how to chain skills together to not get hit. Dodge.

Yup. Dodging will mitigate more damage than you will ever need to heal in this game, if you do it right.

For Engineer, a lot of the abilities and kits are not stand alone. No kit is a complete skillset; nor is every Gadget and Turret and Elixir. Slotting different utilities opens up new combos and new possibilities. This is one thing we have over the Elementalist, which I also main.

If there is one thing I do advise if you’re running Kits, however, it’s to put 10 into Tools and get Speedy Kits. Permaswiftness helps a lot with map completion and I’ve found it difficult to play any other class without it.

It also teaches you a 5 second tempo. This is important because the sense of timing will let you get your combos down.
If you’re lazy, run Infused Precision (10 into Firearms) instead, but keep in mind that your out of combat mobility will suffer without Rocket Boots.

Also note that Engineer actually has a few animation cancels.

• EG4 (Spam “Drop Bundle ~” to stop your leap backward prematurely)
• Rocket Boots (Flick camera to left or right upon landing to direct your dodge roll into another direction
• Jump Shot (Here’s a link to how to do it)

There’s a few others, but those are probably the most useful. It’s little things like this that distinguish “good” engineers from “great” engineers; along with the ability to improvise skill chains as the situation permits.

I highly recommend that you also watch a few stream VODS of Teldo to learn new combos and tricks to the Engineer. It’s PvP focused, but PvP is the school of hardest knocks – and what you learn there is easily applicable to open world PvE

I am going to piggyback off of this thread rather than start a new one.

I’m level 64 now on my engineer and incredibly frustrated. I think I need some advice, because I am very close to dumping my engineer and rolling a new character. I read this forum daily looking for nuggets of wisdom and advice, but I just don’t know what I am doing wrong.

Background:
- I’m running the FT/EG build that Phineas.Poe posted and has great reviews on the build sites. The mechanics of it makes sense. The relationship between the kits makes sense.
- I do PVE and WvW, but my primary concern is PVE right now and I am not worried about rebuilding for WvW until I have hit 80 and exhausted my PVE wants.
- I live in Flamethrower most of the time. I pop Elixir Gun for the light field + acid as I go. I use my regular heal and not the turret because the mobs always destroy it before I get any healing out of it. I even drop to pistol/shield for the double-tap shield daze and pushback.
- I love, love, love the -IDEA- of the flamethrower and I intuitively get the rhythm of it.
- I keep my gear up to date with blues/greens with mostly beserker or assassin stats.

BUT. . .

What I see when I try to kite a mob, and my auto-attack jet is firing is: MISS MISS MISS MISS
If the mob is running, all I see is: MISS MISS MISS MISS
Blasts detonate in random places that are not on the mob. If the mob is moving (like most do) then a good chunk of the time even manually detonating the blast has it blow to the side of the target and inflict little to no damage at all.
Anything Veteran or higher is such a pain to kill that I actively avoid it now. Once I am out of endurance, they hit like a truck, and I can’t circle-kite because of the MISS MISS MISS MISS issues.
I try to keep CC working for me, but it just isn’t enough.
Kit swapping is fine, but I feel like I am manically pressing the keys and rolling through crazy combos just to do less damage than I did on my warrior or mesmer.

The possibilities are there. I can see it. With this class, I have already pulled off some really awesome memorable moments that I could never do with another class.

But… by the gods, why are things so broken? Why does targeting only work sometimes? Why does my auto-attack ALWAYS miss if either the mob or myself is moving (a requirement in Guild Wars)? Why do my abilities do amazing things sometimes and the next completely fall apart? Why is killing a veteran an exercise in carpal-tunnel research?

I want to like this class. I really do.

So tell me… is it me? Is it the profession? Does it get better?

I run P/S with 0,0,30,30,10 (speedy kits). It’s a condition damage centered build that is VERY tanky. For Conditions to work, you have to survive! You must outlast your opponents. And this takes patience. It’s not flashy, it’s not glamorous and you aren’t going to single-handedly take on a zerg and win — but it VERY much has it’s place in group play, such as WvW or dungeons. You’re typically that last one standing and healing others.

If you’re just starting out or not yet at level 80 give yourself a break and slow the game down by tanking up. This allows you to learn to cycle thru your kits and combos while under fire. Engi takes practice, practice and more practice. Spammers or those looking for short cuts need not apply.

My honest advice would be to roll a new class.

If you really don’t want to do that, then grab a flamethrower and use elixirs until you reach level 80, then do whatever you want. Flamethrower is pretty good at lower levels, it just has bad scaling.

Remember that the flamethrower hits 10 times per auto, so if you get a couple of misses you may not be missing out on that much dps actually. However, there are serious issues in this game with all cone-shaped aoes, including flamethrower auto.

Try to point your camera (not your character) at your target, like a 3rd person shooter. I also feel like strafing unfortunately amplifies the problem.

Constantly try new skill combinations. The one thing engineer has going for them is a large variety of potentially complimentary skills—that’s it. That’s the only thing the engineer has.

Yes, engineer is harder, but most professions can work through PvE zones without dodging, moving, or using skills besides autoattack. It gets better, unfortunately, when you understand all the bugs and figure out how to work around them.

I can give that build a try Soon. Would you mind posting your traits? I don’t mind if it takes longer to kill the mobs.. I just don’t want to get carpal-tunnel to do it every single time. Even Ele attunement swapping is more relaxed than what I am having to do to drop anything Veteran.

Is the #2 FT blast really as broken as it seems? Auto-detonation on hit is really, really hit and miss (pun entirely intended). Manual detonation is more reliable, but fails on mobs that are moving left/right instead of standing still or running right toward me.

I’m trying the camera change, but I just tested it in WvW and when targetting a player that is running by me, the entire channeled jet seems to go behind them and do nothing but miss. I tried manually forcing the camera to slightly lead the target and it still mostly missed. I would rather the developers just decouple the jet from a targetting mechanic entirely than leave it like this. I can aim it myself, but it autocorrects WRONG.

I don’t think of myself as a spammer. I really do want to get this class down, but I really feel like I am fighting buggy mechanics more than the other players and mobs. I have no interest in the former. That’s not fun.

MeanCoffeeBean.2073:

I want to like this class. I really do.

So tell me… is it me? Is it the profession? Does it get better?

It’s not the profession. It’s just the way the game is coded.

Unequip your Flamethrower so you are wielding your Rifle or Pistol. Hold down your right-mouse button and look straight into the air. Shoot your weapon and see what happens. The bullets should go straight up into the air.

Guild Wars 2 has an aiming mechanic where holding down the right-mouse button turns the game into a third person shooter. It seems like a Flamethrower-specific problem, but it’s actually how pretty much every weapon works. It just is more obvious when wielding the FT because of its ridiculously fast attack rate, and because of its ridiculous, conical spread.

MeanCoffeeBean.2073:

I can give that build a try Soon. Would you mind posting your traits? I don’t mind if it takes longer to kill the mobs.. I just don’t want to get carpal-tunnel to do it every single time. Even Ele attunement swapping is more relaxed than what I am having to do to drop anything Veteran.

Is the #2 FT blast really as broken as it seems? Auto-detonation on hit is really, really hit and miss (pun entirely intended). Manual detonation is more reliable, but fails on mobs that are moving left/right instead of standing still or running right toward me.

I’m trying the camera change, but I just tested it in WvW and when targetting a player that is running by me, the entire channeled jet seems to go behind them and do nothing but miss. I tried manually forcing the camera to slightly lead the target and it still mostly missed. I would rather the developers just decouple the jet from a targetting mechanic entirely than leave it like this. I can aim it myself, but it autocorrects WRONG.

I don’t think of myself as a spammer. I really do want to get this class down, but I really feel like I am fighting buggy mechanics more than the other players and mobs. I have no interest in the former. That’s not fun.

I’m not sure what else to recommend, if manually aiming isn’t working for you. Maybe stand a bit further back from mobs? The nature of cone AoE makes it difficult to hit stuff a point blank range. Backpedaling will usually keep your camera angle more accurate than strafing left or right as well.

I’d really suggest trying different kits/weapons/combinations. One of the tough things about playing an engineer is that sometimes, the stuff that looked really awesome to you didn’t turn out to be what you expect. No one expects flamethrower to be a light-damage, 3rd-person shooter style utility kit, and it can be very frustrating to have to use it that way. Part of the problem is that engineers were designed very late in a game that released very early; part of it is that flamethrower was incredibly overpowered in betas and (I believe) every single skill and trait related to it has been changed in some way since last June.

Unfortunately, playing as an engineer does require a certain amount of knowledge of the system.