Guild Wars 2

Greetings, kind and noble Engineers.

I have been heavily considering rolling an Engineer alt to potentially be a character I play regularly, or even as a new main. Currently my main is a Necromancer (and has been since BWE #2), but I am frustrated with the class’ lack of meaningful sustain or escapes, and the fact that, since the 6/25 patch, it is now considered a cheap and easymode playstyle. I don’t like that; I want to be a special snowflake.

Which is why I want to play an Engi. I know the skill ceiling is wildly high, and I’ve seen some amazing engineer players that just astound me with what they can do with a class that sometimes doesn’t seem to make sense to an outsider. (Recent quote I heard: "What is that? An elementalist? No, a warrior. Wait! It’s an Engineer!)

I currently have an Engineer at level 24. I really like the idea of a rifle build, and I love all of the blast finishers and leaps and combo fields that potentially exist. So I have some questions (I mainly do small group play in WvW):

- What gear should I shoot for if I want a rifle build? Would Knight’s work? It seems many Engis don’t run that. I’m not positive on what the best gear would be.
- Is the trait that blinds on rifle crits a good trait? Or is it sullied by regular use of kits? It seems very strong.
- How, exactly, does the Healing Turret blast finisher work? I can’t seem to get it to work like I see in videos I watch. Also, is it possible to proc 2 blast finishers off of that water field?
- What kind of traits or build would be absolutely necessary for survival?
- Any tips on survival in general? I genuinely enjoy watching engineer videos when they last a long time in a fight, but I can never seem to understand how, exactly it is happening.
- How do you handle conditions?

I think from an offensive standpoint, I understand the engineer (and I’m excited about it), but surviving as an engineer is not a skill I have developed yet, but it is the one that fascinates me the most.

Any tips or replies would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for reading.

Roe.3679:

- What gear should I shoot for if I want a rifle build? Would Knight’s work? It seems many Engis don’t run that. I’m not positive on what the best gear would be.

I’ve heard Zerker is how to go. Knight might be OK, though, looking at the stats. My stuff is mostly zerker and I manage with it. Still building my end game gear up so…

- Is the trait that blinds on rifle crits a good trait? Or is it sullied by regular use of kits? It seems very strong.

I play a flamegineer, so I can’t advise you on that. I use dual pistols and flamethrower, and I get might off Juggs. I focus on the burning condition, and things I set on fire don’t tend to survive long. It has hitting issues when you move around a lot, but if you can play gun emplacement for a while as your allies keep the heat (no pun intended) off you, the Flamethrower can make you feel like a god.

- How, exactly, does the Healing Turret blast finisher work? I can’t seem to get it to work like I see in videos I watch. Also, is it possible to proc 2 blast finishers off of that water field?

This isn’t why I use the Healing Turret, so I wouldn’t know. Sorry. I use it as it was intended, as a healing font to keep you up all fight. My turrets autoheal and have increased health/armor. I wouldn’t have bothered improving them if I just wanted them to blow up. I only detonate them when I’ve moved off and notice I didn’t pick them up and they haven’t been destroyed, yet.

- What kind of traits or build would be absolutely necessary for survival?

Toughness and Vitality. But if you skimp on the Power, Precision and +CD, you’re not going to survive long enough. Engineers are a balancing act. Enough damage to kill things and enough armor or health to last through the fight. Find the balance that works for your aggression level.

- Any tips on survival in general? I genuinely enjoy watching engineer videos when they last a long time in a fight, but I can never seem to understand how, exactly it is happening.

Some people like to think we’re DD DPS, but we’re actually better at condition support. The Flamethrower and Mines work best when applied over an area, and they affect a lot of targets, so if people are tightly grouped, it’s all good. One on one is good, too, as you can hold your own that way, but if you’re fighting close range on your own vs a group, you’ll get wiped most of the time.

- How do you handle conditions?

I burn through them. Anything I can find that shortens their time on me, but honestly, the healing turret keeps me up in most situations except LS zerg fights. Then I don’t bother. I just burn kitten down.

Im fond of the celestial armor. But thats just me. The rifle deals its damage from power, so ignore condition if all your looking for is damage. But its a close ranged weapon, some defence wouldnt hurt. I know alot of people say zerker on every thing. I prefer the balanced approach.

The healing turret: Once you deploy it you have to overcharge it to produce a water field. watch the white ring. if its a normal pulse that just applies regeneration its a small white ring, if its an overcharge that has a waterfield it will be a much taller and wider ring. once you see that detonate it, and any other blast finishers you have. If your quick enough you can cause the healing turrets first pulse to be an overcharged. thats how you see engis place and denote it almost immediately.
I would like to point out that the blast finisher from detonating turrets originates from you, not the turret. So you have to be in the water field your turret can be any where.

I dont play like most people, as in I refuse to use grenades or elixirs. Despite cutting off some of my classes most powerful utilities I have little problem in PvE, Dungeons or WvW. I’ll use an elixir if the situation pretty much requires it. But for my normal build I avoid them. This is just a personal preference, not a recommendation that you do the same.

As for survival I relay on my Celestial armor and my various knockbacks and immobilizes So, to stop from getting downed I make sure they cant hit me. On that note I dont find blind useful at all. players attack so quickly having them miss 1 auto-attack isnt going to amount to much. Or cause one of the ranger’s Rapid fire shots to miss while all the others still hit. If blind caused an entire ability to miss it might be a different story.

In WvW, I recommend you take the tool kit, it as a few useful tricks you will find useful And the auto-attack hits really hard, So if you got them in your face, might as well beat them with a wrench for a little while before going back to the rifle for blunderbuss and overcharged shot.

if using the rifle, aim for berserker gear. you can use a mix of knights/zerk if you’re having survivability issues.

the blinding rifle trait is ok if you’re dueling warriors but there are better traits in the firearms tree.

to get the water blast overcharge your healing turret then detonate it immediately after. it’s very possible to get 2 or even 3 blasts inside the turret field using rocket boots and/or another turret.

as for builds, if you plan on only using rifle without kits, i recommend a static discharge build. many variants can be found all over these forums. this build focuses on heavy burst without much regard to survivability.

your survivability depends on your build. if you do choose to run a static discharge build your survivability comes in the form of killing your opponent quickly. rocket boots is a great tool for escaping. formula 409 is an excellent form of condi removal if you run elixirs. we have many blinds with the grenade kit, bomb kit, pistol 3, and flamethrower 5. we have lots of snares with glue shot, glue bomb, chill grenades, net shot, etc.

i personally handle conditions using formula 409 and 3 elixirs which gives me 6 condition removals. elixir gun 5 removes conditions. healing turret will remove 2 conditions on overcharge. med kit 5 can remove a condition. and of course elixir c will give you a condition removal and condition wipe.

I think you should look at the medic engineer build. The survivability is insane, and unlike the guardian healway, this build has ~the same healing but with more damage, and in anAoE

Just to make sure, by a rifle build do you mean a build using no kits and a rifle, or do you mean a build that contains a rifle? The two are very different. While both exist, the latter is far more common.

Survival is through active abilities. Engineer Toolkit Block is the best block ingame. Our healing turret, through double-tapping (Or sometimes just mashing) 6 then pressing f1, delivers more healing than most other skills on a comparable cooldown. We have a large amount of CC, blinds, weaknesses, and other abilities which can mitigate incoming damage.

Conditions have a few main counters for engineers.
1) Don’t let them be applied in the first place. Engineers have quite a few means of this.
2) Healing turret removes 2 on double-tap.
3) Any elixir can when traited.
Elixir C looks good, but with the existence of Cleansing Formula 409 it isn’t really all that useful in a lot of cases.

Roe.3679:

I don’t like that; I want to be a special snowflake.

You came to the right place.

I find all the engineer abilities interesting (except for maybe elixirs) and the great thing is that you can always insert survivability into any build just by changing a single utility. I think you might like the elixir gun, as it has a stunbreak, a condi cleanse/heal, weakness, and an escape, as well as modest damage and a great support cleanse.

You can put the elixir gun into any build except maybe a static discharge build (power build focused on short-cooldown toolbelt skills). A lot of people think you can’t use elixir gun in a power build, but that’s only because the autoattack inflicts bleeding. You’re an engineer, you can use any autoattack you want at any time.

The best advice is always tweak your build and try everything to see what you like! There’s always something you can adjust in an engineer build. I constantly tinker with my builds even though I’ve been playing an engineer since launch.

Elixir Gun definitely fits into any build ever since a stunbreak was moved to Regenerating Mist. The synergy E-Gun has with Inertial Converter is huge and can allow you that crucial counter-CC that let’s you turn a fight around. Not only that but the presence of both a field and a finisher and soft CC (Elixir F) makes it fit in with a lot of other utilities you can take.

Triple Kit, Healing Turret and Rifle work very well together; or you can run 1 DPS kit, EG and another utility for whatever your build lacks.

In terms of damage, Berserker’s Armour gives the most, but the most intriguing thing is that Celestial Armour is only a 9% difference in damage thanks to the higher % Critical damage, which is the hardest stat to fit into a build. Don’t get Celestial Trinkets though.

In terms of then min-maxing your stats, the most pressing issue is the lack of Power and Precision in your Trinkets. Aim to get the highest you can whilst sacrificing as much survivability as you are comfortable with. When building Effective HP, get enough Vitality to equal 10x your Armour, then increase Armour and Vitality equally after that. Engineer is very fortunate in that Alchemy is such a strong line that getting that headstart for Vitality is very easy. In contrast, Inventions has little to offer unless you’re tanking, so Toughness may be a stat you find yourself short of when minmaxing. Keep Knights and Cavaliers in the back of your mind when looking to round out the last couple of stat points.

In terms of Runes, Engineer does well with pretty much anything. If you’re looking to exploit Enhance Performance and Med Kit for Might stacks, 2xAltruism or 6xNoble make it difficult to go wrong. If you’re looking for Precision runes, Lyssa works very well, but only with Elixir X at the moment because Supply Crate still doesn’t proc Lyssa . I personally run with 5 Scholar 1 Divinity because it rounds out my stats perfectly at 45% Crit rate and 70% Crit damage and over 2k Power while still having 2.5k Armour and 17.8k HP (HP a little low, but I have traits for it)

In terms of making plays, Toolkit with Rifle for their combination of CC and active defense offers the greatest opportunities for kiting, pressure and counterpressure. I find that the problem of the Power builds for Engineer are that it has very little teamfight presence in small group WvW or Solo roaming unless running Grenades and Elixir R. You end up building very selfishly and with no Stability or reliable Protection or Aegis it’s very difficult to keep teammates up unless you sacrifice 1/3 of your build to Elixir R.

In terms of autoattacks, Bomb Kit, Grenade Kit and Rifle are probably the best ones worth spamming in an Engineer build. I’d advise against doing it for too long though because as Engineer you can do so much better by rotating off your kits than spamming AA.