Guild Wars 2

I love my engineer. He’s fun but the more I move into the game the more I notice a glaring fundamental hole in how the profession is deigned. Perhaps this has been talked about to some extent however I’d like others thoughts on things.

This problem basically comes down to using a Utility Skill slot in order to achieve something that almost every other profession has access too; a weapon swap. I understand the benefits to each weapon kit however I don’t understand why I need to lose a third of my utility and the stats and sigils on my weapons in order to gain those. It seems like a very high cost and when you consider the lack of simplicity when it comes to the auto-attack feature and the way Elixer-S (imo one of our best skills) interacts with kits it really makes me ask if using one is squeezing the most out of my engineer.

When you consider the state turrets seem to be in, about 25% of my skills are already not competitive and require a heavy trait investment. Add to that the fact that another 25% of my skills are weapon kits and it really pigeon holes the class into a few builds and hard choices that I at least have a hard time being happy about.

Anyone been noticing the same?

I’m not a fan of the turrets either, but I’ve never felt particularly kittened by the lack o weapon swap. I guess you could look at it another way: you could equip 2 weapon kits and have more skills than other classes (excluding elementalists) in fights. The engineer’s theme is similar to the elementalist’s with its versatility, but higher armor and a stronger focus on support/crowd control (seems this way to me anyway).

Edit: however, yes. need auto attack to be saved on kit swap, my fingers demand it.

There’s only two turrets I ever use, Healing and Rifle, the others have always failed to do anything in PvE for me.

Heal Turret: It has a decently substantial heal when placed, and if you pick it up it has like a 15s cooldown. That’s really good, and since there’s no good reason to leave it down, I always just pick it up immediately. If me or people around me are having problems with conditions I’ll double tap as I set it, to use the second fire of “200 heal and condition removal”, and then pick it up. This, in my opinion, makes it the strongest healing ability for Engineers.

Rifle Turret: Basically the only turret with a rate of fire decent enough to actually fire, which is nice. I only set it down however when fighting a single enemy, against groups it’s far better to utilize the actual reason to take this turret: It’s toolbelt skill. Short cooldown, auto-targets nicely, which makes it super nice for the Lightning Bounce trait in Tools. Allows for really nice mobbing. To make it even better, it can be fired no matter what you are doing. Stunned, knocked down, feared, even channeling another ability (like the poison volley on Pistols), it will fire no matter what, and not interrupt what you were doing.

Every other turret I’ve tried is not worth it’s salt, but I love those two.

I started an engi for the turrets, the weapon kits are a nice gimmick but thats all I view them as, in a real combat situation I profer my rifle, turrets and the land mine. so far im not too impressed with the engi’s elite skills.

I do use grenades underwater because my normal harpoon combat skills are awful, tho Iv yet to play any class that had good underwater combat skills.

Some times I switch to the flame thrower when im playing with friends in a low level area, but then usualy have to switch back because the damage is sub par and it misses like mad when moving around.

I will say my engi’s turrets are alot more useful than my necro’s minions, which I know is setting the bar pretty low.
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There was a rather large topic (I forget the topic name) that went into detail about some of the fundamental engineer issues in its design, such as the utility skills, weapon skills and toolbelt skills.

XelNigma.6315:

I started an engi for the turrets, the weapon kits are a nice gimmick but thats all I view them as, in a real combat situation I profer my rifle, turrets and the land mine. so far im not too impressed with the engi’s elite skills.

Yeah the elites are kinda…eh. Supply Crate is great because it’s free turrets to distract enemies with, and some healing, but that’s the only one I’d ever use in a serious manner. When I’m messing around the Mortar is fun, but since you’re so vulnerable while using it, there’s not many times when you can.