Guild Wars 2

I almost exclusively use pistol and shield as an engi, as it gives me an AOE pushback, projectile reflect, stun, and daze. But whenever I see other engis they usually use dual pistols or a rifle. Is it just a matter of preference? Or am I missing something from the other weapon sets that make it better than what I’m getting from pistol/shield?

I love the P/S myself. The #4 skill does AoE damage when it does the knock back. Learn the animations before enemies range and you reflect it back at them in a 4 fold ordeal in my eyes. 1 mitigates damage, 2 reflects damage to the enemy, 3 knocks them back in a fun “get off me” fashion, 4 does its own AoE damage.

Solo, I like the P/S with tool kit for the wrench and personal battering ram to launch. It gives me 6 ranged attacks at 900. Counting throw shield. With bomb kit for BoB for yet another “get off me” AoE knock backand AoE damage.

I miss the dmg and immobilize from the rifle but i definitely like P/S over duel pistols. I don’t like the pistol but if I want the shield I don’t have a choice =/

The shield gives good abilitys, the off-hand pistol…. not so much.

Just to mix things up I’ll switch from my tried and true rifle to the pistol, and while at first I miss the net and overcharge shot, The pistol main hand does offer better group damage.

I wish the engi could switch weapons like every one else, that way i wouldnt have to manually change from rifle to P/S

I have to agree with you there. I think a solution to balance issues concerning giving us weapon swap would be to disable your weapon swap if you have a weapon kit equipped. I’d rather run a pistol/shield and rifle build with all utilities either as gadgets or elixers. The weapon kits are neat but they feel mandatory in order to keep up with others ability to swap weapons. ie not fun

people are underestimating the blowtorch ability. with proper equipment and runes it will deal 6k damage total when you manage to hit it at close range.

I like pistol shield a lot. It’s good for people like me who want to play it safe.
Pistol/pistol is better to hunt with a nice aoe immobilize and more powerful short range damage

I stopped using the shield because the cooldowns are far too long for the abilities to be useful.
The reflect forces you to stand still for a few seconds, and the stun skill only effects the first person that strikes you.
Versus a fire-cone, that while can be quite difficult to aim at times, is the most damaging condition and is on an extremely short cooldown, plus an aoe ensnare and 5s cripple.

But it all depends on your build. If you want to build a tanky engineer go with shield. If you want condition stacking, go dual pistol. If you want raw power and crit, go rifle.

Yeah, they are all very different and stronger in different ways.
I use the shield for knockback, blast finisher and boomerang shield. I haven’t really used the reflect and block stun yet. Practicing though.
The cooldowns are indeed for long compared to OH pistol. But it’s up to how we play and what suits it best.

My personal favorite (P/S). The survivability of it is unmatched in any engineer setup.
I typically run with bomb kit for BOB which gives me a blind, block, push and launch and by the time I get through using those, I’ve conquered the mob.
This particular setup plays very much like ranger from GW1. Very scirmish-y.

p/s is nice thanks to magnetic inversion – easy access to a blast finisher means area might (bomb kit) or area weakness (grenade kit) on demand. Both are crazy good depending on the situation.

P/S is my main weapon setup (at least for PvE). I run a more support oriented build, and the durability options offered by the shield really help out.

Reinforced Shield (Inventions trait VII) also gives +90 toughness and 20% CD reduction for shield skills, so it’s definitely a trait worth looking at if you want to be a primary shield user.

Magnetic Shield can also reflect some interesting things, such as the rocks the larger wurms spit at you. Pretty sure it’s ineffective against seige weapon attacks though (i.e. ballista).

I just love the rifle.
Get up close and personal, net shot so they can’t run, Blunderbuss for damage and bleeds, Rocket kick to add a burn, with damage traits i get massive damage out of Jump Shot and then just knock em back with Overcharged Shot.
It keeps em down for like 3 seconds while having multiple bleeds, burn and vulnerability eating at them.

I kinda like the rifle because it is up close and personal. I usually prefer melee, but i just love the “engineer” feel.

I can maintain very high damage with some good survivability and escapes.

use the shield and bomb kit in sPVP, people will rage at the knockbacks

Engineer shield is my favorite offhand weapon among all the classes.

Knockback, reflection, stun, daze and block plus a blast finisher. All with just two cleverly used skills. Yep. I like it.

P+P has Glue Shot and Blowtorch. Although Blowtorch is bugged right now(it only hits 3 targets), it is very strong dmg and burning skill. Glue shot is very good for kiting and catching multiple enemies in the range of Flamethrower. I use P+P setting when I use condition dmg setting and Flamethrower Kit.

P+S has reflection, knockback, stun, and daze. All of these are good for survivality and utility, however, shield skills have a little long CDs. Maybe 40sec and 30sec? I forgot the exact number. Reducing 5~10 secs of shield skills CDs would be very thankful ANET!

I really like the shield abilities, they are so versatile with their dual usage. Pistol offhand is a bit lackluster right now due to glue shot being so slow, and the flame burst is hard to hit with.

I used to swear by the pistol/shield when I was a newbie back in beta. But later realised how much more powerful blowtorch was and how I didn’t need THAT much control abilities.

Once I realised how power scales vs conditions, and how conditions can overflow in large group combat I switched to the rifle, and now run a rifle/gadget build. I can’t imagine anymore how I ever found pistol/shield useful given it’s woeful lack of actual attacks, combined with really long cooldowns on it’s CC’s

I’m not a fan cuz i wanna see my backpack ^^
it’s off display while Shield is toggled off!

I use rifle more, but I am working on a healing set of gear where I will use the pistol/shield. I think the rifle does a bit more damage, and most times I am useing grenades anyways so i think the rifle helps with the damage a bit.