Guild Wars 2

Alright, so I’ve been reading the forums for a little while and seen quite a few complaints regarding engineers. So, I decided to post my build for people to play with and adjust. Welcome to the Power Punch Engineer.

To start things off, let’s go with the traits, utilities, weapons and armor. What has worked best for me is;

Explosives – 0

Firearms – 20, Running 1/I (Fireforged Trigger) and 8/VIII (Juggernaut)

Inventions – 20, Running 4/IV (Stabilized Armor) and 6/VI (Cloaking Device) or 5/V (Energized Armor)

Alchemy – 20, 1/I (Invigorating Speed) and 7/VII (Deadly Mixture) or 9/IX (Backpack Regenerator)

Tools – 10, 6/VI (Speedy Kits)

Utilities – Healing Turret, Flame Thrower, Tool Kit, Elixir Gun, and Supply Crate. Weapons – Pistol + Shield or Rifle.

Armor – Mix of Knights and Soldier. Berserker if you are feeling confident. Two-set runes for 60% might duration.

Now that we have the build to work with, I’ll go over my reasoning for each trait. Keeping things in order, let’s start with Firearms.

Firearms;
Fireforged Trigger plays a big role for this build because it will utilize our Flame Thrower and elixir gun for both damage and support. With this trait you are able to use Flame Blast after just two channels of Flame Jet. Do not let this fool you though, Flame jet is still not the primary damage here. This also helps get more Acid Bombs down which is great for getting quick blast finishers via Acid Bomb Cancel. Finally, Fumigate is a force to be reckoned with as group support. It has a cool down of only 9 1/2 seconds and can just about wipe a full bar of conditions off of your party.

Juggernaut is simply to juggle might stacks and give yourself that nice little armor boost to help survive.

Inventions;
Stabilized Armor, similar to Juggernaut, allows us to more easily play face tank when we need to. What’s not to like?

Cloaking Device will be more PvP based. It may not seem like a long stealth, but this can be a life saver in a bad situation.

Energized Armor gives a plain raw bump to our damage. It may not be a huge boost, but it’s a nice passive trait to toss up and not worry about.

Alchemy;
Invigorating Speed can be invaluable when partnered up with Speedy Kits. This build will be jumping through kits quite often, so this is a great compliment to our ability to survive.

Deadly Mixture is one I have questioned as far as function goes. I don’t personally see a huge change with or without it, but 15% damage is nothing to laugh at(?)

Backpack Regenerator is a simple trait that I look at in a similar way to Energized Armor. Toss it up for some passive healing and forget about it. It doesn’t have the best healing, but it is an extra green number to add to all of the others that we have.

Tools;
Speedy Kits of course! Just goes too well with Invigorating Speed. This also helps us keep up with the rest when running with a zerg.

Utilities;
Healing Turret works wonders for removing those pesky conditions. We run with a considerable amount of blast finishers as well, so make use of that water field!

Flame Thrower will be helping us get that damage out. Flame Blast does some pretty decent damage if timed right and it also provides a fire field. Again, make use of those blast finishers!

Tool Kit will be helping us with survival and Crowd Control. Gear shield works wonders as always for soaking damage. Box of Nails is nice for slowing down any players or mobs that are in pursuit. Pry Bar does some awesome direct damage and the confuse works considerably well with the might we get. Finally, Magnet has many uses, from pulling people off a wall or just simply knocking something down another time to keep it locked out.

Elixir Gun, believe it or not, is another main source of our damage. A well placed Acid Bomb does decent damage and partners as a blast finisher. Two for one, no complaint here. Elixir F can do some decent damage with multiple targets around and gives another cripple. Fumigate will be a condition users worst nightmare, don’t forget to keep that team support rolling! Super Elixir has a couple different uses. You can use this as slight passive healing for the party or just as an AoE condition cleanse while on the run. It only removes one condition so it’s rather situational. Don’t forget that we have a stun breaker on our Tool Belt with this now!

Supply Crate, because well, who doesn’t like to drop a box on some unsuspecting thief!? Could also be argued to run Mortar for WvWvW. Does some ok damage and has a nice arc of fire to put out some pressure from a safe distance

Weapons;
Pistol+Shield will provide another blast finisher, a knock back, a two hit stun, and a blind. Seeing as how this build is mostly in a kit, that leaves this weapon choice up for pure utility. Don’t forget about the poison, it can help keep that enemy player from healing too quickly after all. Sigils will be Superior Air and Superior Battle or Bloodlust.

Rifle will be more on the berserker side of things. Jump Shot does a huge amount of damage and Blunderbuss is not far behind it for how quick it is. We also get Net Shot to help hold our target in place and set up that burst along with Overcharged Shot which, as we all know, has a rather long knock down time on our target. Great for
locking out a single target for a while, but we lose a blast finisher in exchange for a leap finisher. Sigil will be Superior Fire with Superior Air as the cheaper alternative.

Armor;
Knights for the sake of getting those critical hits we all enjoy so much and Soldier to be a better face tank. I would suggest Soldier to get use to the game play if it doesn’t work out right away and slowly transition to Knights / Berserker as you adjust. As Engineers, we do have a naturally high health pool, may as well use that to our advantage.

Runes will be there to help keep those might stacks up longer which will help both us and any allies we have around at the time. I currently have two Superior Strength, two Superior Hoelbrak, and two Superior Fire all to get the extra 60% might. These runes will have Juggernaut sitting around 9 stacks of consistant might. Of course, this is up to preference so feel free to play around with it and find what works for you.

*Edit for sigil change after new information / testing.

Now, you may be wondering why I’ve called this the ‘Power Punch Engineer’ right? The answer is simple. This build is based on landing attacks that do substantial damage, but don’t take long to use again. For instance, Magnet into a Napalm into a Fire Blast into a Prybar into an Acid Bomb. Magnet would CC the target, while Napalm gives passive burning and a fire combo field. Fire Blast will do a great amount of direct damage, as will Prybar with it’s high direct damage and five stacks of confusion. Acid Bomb to finish it up with a blast finisher and moderate passive AoE damage. Then of course with how fast Fire Blast comes off cool down, you could most likely use this one more time as well.

Up sides to this build are that we can do decent direct and condition damage. Our primary damage is going to be direct so we will work well with a party. We are also very tanky and offer quite a bit of support, even if we are not even fully trying to play the support role with our AoE condition removal and healing. Our mobility is also fairly decent if we fully utilize Speedy Kits and Acid Bomb.

Down sides to this build are that a good portion of our attacks can be dodged, predicted, or mitigated in some way. We are somewhat lacking in self condition removal as well.

Ending stats for Spvp – 2,803 Attack, 3,118 with 9 Might / 19% Crit / 1,685 Toughness, 1885 with Flame Thrower / 1,730 Vitality / 275 Condition Damage, 590 with 9 Might / 200 Healing / 10% Crit Damage

Ending Stats for PvE / WvW – Work in Progress.

Thanks for the read, and I hope you enjoy the build if you decide to give it a try!

*Edit for typo in base attack, my bad

1. Fire and Air doesn’t work. They share the same cooldown. Don’t add in an on swap-sigil as well because they do that as well. Probably best with Bloodlust.

2. You do realize that most people dodge the 2nd attack after Magnet. My standard condition burst is often Magnet, Prybar and Static Shot/Blowtorch. More often than not 1 of those 2 misses because they dodged. And if they didn’t, they’re noobs. I actually now auto attack mostly to bait out a dodge.

3. I also don’t see how Might stacking runes benefit a build like this seeing as how you end up with 9 stacks. 9 stacks is not a lot, especialyl when you’d end up with around 6 without those runes. That’s barely 105 power. At least use Sigil of Battle if you want might stacking runes.

4. 2083 attack, 3118 with 9 might. Strong might you are using. Might gives 35 power, 9 times that is 315, not 1.1k like you think it is.

I think this build is a little bit of everything, which is okay, but doesn’t really fit anything that well.

Edited a few things and updated the sigils after testing. New information for me to work with is always a bonus!

I suppose I forgot to mention that you do need to use some degree of timing to make things work out in your favor. The build is definitely not one of the ‘CC and spam’ builds, although you do get to use Fire Blast quite often.

As for the might stacking runes, it’s more as a party support thing to make the extra 9 you get from blast finishers (12 if you use your healing turret’s blast, most likely due to low pressure on the party) last as long as possible. The build is based around being able to do ‘decent’ but consistent damage while providing boons and condition support to your immediate party.

The build fits mostly in the role of a tank / support depending on armor and rune combo. Engineers, apart from Grenade spamming, seem to not be all that known for direct damage. So this is what I have run with and seem to have had success with. The runes themselves are up for debate based on play style. Personally, I went with might stacking runes for the 3 stacks of might (per blast finisher) lasting 35 seconds for the party as a whole. 9 to 12 stacks of might with a 35 second duration seems to help a group out more often than not, and it also places us around 18 to 21 stacks of might without having to run HGH. It also allows us to reach closer to 25 stacks of might with the second set of blast finishers, even more so with a Sigil of Battle.