Guild Wars 2

For the past two years I’ve been using full celestial with runes of the traveler because it offered a nice balance between power, condition, and survivability. Something the engineer excelled from given the profession’s skill set. However, since the last patch Anet really opened the door for possibilities.

1. Healing is no longer a useful trait for me anymore because elixir infused bombs have been replaced with bunker down. And while that’s an OK trait, it does require you run into the medkit, which not often will be possible give the hectic conditions in a zerg fight. So one less reason to promote the celestial benefits.

2. Mecha Legs is actually worthwhile. Not only do you get the speed boost, but reduction from conditions that slow you down as well. Incentive to no longer depend on traveler runes for the speed boost. It almost screams essential trait.

3. Prior to the patch, bleed stacks and confusion was my bread and butter for condition damage. Poison was more about utility and burn was ok, but always secondary in my mind. With their ability to stack now, it gives them a more central role in offensive conditions. I’d even say more central than bleeds to those that have access to a lot of burns.

4. Condition duration feels really good on the engineer. The firearms traitline will net you 33% more time with bleeds and burn, plus 50% more uptime with your pistols. If you combine that with rare veggie pizza and runes of Balthazar, you’re pretty much a walking furnace. I’m not all that crazy about the flame thrower, but its toolbet skill incendiary ammo just adds fuel to the fire. I was doing more burn damage with my celestial gear than my physical damage, which surprised me.

And now with the ability to convert ascended gear, I’m starting to wonder if it’s time to hang the celestial gear in the closet and jump into the min/max game. So I’m just playing around with purely focused builds to maximize one offensive characteristic of the engineer and play a more heavy weapons role in bombing the enemy from a distance. Mokittenefinitely prefers a more power centric toon given that it only has one damaging condition (poison), which is nothing to praise about. However, getting up close with the pistol and incendiary ammo really shakes things up, more so than a power centric build IMO. And there’s something about the engineer than screams conditions. Just so much there it would feel like a waste not to use them.

So I thought I would start a discussion with the community and see what you prefer. Are you pro power, pro condition, or just run a balanced setup?

Back in the days I was poor and had to make a choice that would support my gameplay for a long time, so i made my ascended armor a celestial one.
then i swap trinkets/weapons on my needs, which are full berserker or sinister. Imho sinister screams engi so much and currently i’m trying to find the build that suits me perfectly ;-)

depends on build mostly but… if you want to go all out damage on the flamethrower then rampagers is likely the best option with its focus of crit with power and condition damage to top it off, rock that 70+% critthrower with like 3-4 “extra damage” procs and a bunch of balthazar gear for insanity burn durations AND an excellent and quite frequent burst when a rifle is taken into account.

Nate.8146:

bunker down. And while that’s an OK trait, it does require you run into the medkit, which not often will be possible give the hectic conditions in a zerg fight.

i dont understand

Power/Crit/Ferocity in PvE, Power, Condi, or hybrid in pvp and wvw. I have no ascended armor just trinkets and weapons and 4 armor sets (perplexity, strength, traveler, and scholar). Imho engineer is perfectly fine using pure power (rifle, nades, mortar, bombs all synergize well). One melee jumpshot with the right traits will hit very big.

I still run mostly celestial in WvW and PvP. With the proper might stacking build it is still pretty strong. Had DS ele run up to me in WvW and try and truly me because he must have seen condi + food. 2 whacks of my tool kit and he was in water healing.

Bunker down doesn’t require anything but decent crit to be good. It is both a decent damage and healing trait.

bunker down is more of a damage trait than a healing one, which punishes enemies for trying to outmanouver the engineer but it also provides a defensive “bunker” for you to fall back to if they keep trying to run away from you, those mines can really cause some grief.
However its also more specifically a supporting trait healingwise providing ALOT of healing if you keep proccing it on cooldown. (them bandages heal a good 800 with healing power which is 4k over 10 seconds)

I agree that it´s preferable to play more offensive after the last big patch — but don´t throw the cele armor too far away ^^
I´ve recently been having a lot of fun with that one
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdQQFAUlUUhOvYJXwELQ7FLsFV4SdRvGYIWiBwXSdhHAA-T1hHABLfBAoY/hdV+9mOAAeAA0pEUR1fCAgAszdGAG6QH6QH6Qbmz8oz8oHtUA2NGA-w

Nice hybrid dmg, and all sort of cc
You can use the crate if you prefer more hard cc, but most of the times, the slickshoes are fine.
I´m still not shure about the sigills — intelligence is often used up by passive procs, so you don´t get more than 1 controlable save crit unless you handle it extremly cearefull.
Energy is nice, but a bit too much defensive since you got all those blind and kite stuff.
I´d be happy for any ideas btw

Well, I went against the tide, and made a Condition, Power, Vitality build, and it ROCKS… absolutely rocks!

I spy elixir infused bombs’ dissappearing as a problem.

So do I. Even though bunker down does not require the kittenty med kit.

Sinister if burst doesn’t matter, berserker if it does. I suggest against trio fractals with 2+ condi engineers in them on volcanic, the lava eles suck.

Hm … I prefer power at the volcanic / grawl fractal for the endboss. Since bomb aa spreads wide, whereas except for bomb 2 all other skills in the condi rota won’t, I think traited mortar with power and bombs and barrage with rifle are far supperior in that situation.

But I agree overall – sinister if burst doesn’t matter, berserker if it does. Yet also take in consideration skills that only scale with power and are worth much, like mine against dredges for the boonstrip for your protection affected none-condi allies or against condi resisting enemies like Mai’Thrin or Dredge/Ice Elemental endboss.