Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

Getting my engineer close to the magic 80 and thinking about builds. I’ve recently gotten into WvW and have particularly noticed two things: engineers being very effective at long-distance AoE with grenades, and people on my team complaining about engineers being “impossible to kill”. These both appeal to me greatly, and so I’m looking for a build that can combine high resilience with the ability to lay down the hurt on people, in open field battles, when attacking keeps, or when defending them.

I nearly always run in small groups or solo, so I don’t care about zerg-specific optimizations. And since I’m relatively new I should stay away from anything that relies a lot on fancy combos.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DfUoHcJLWjoc

Thanks, but that looks like an offense-oriented, bomb-based build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQJAqel0piY3zyuF17ISoHS49pWiUgZW2HFy1DC-jUCBIOChk0A0HIkIgppFRjtIsIas6GYqVER1uEFRrWKAYmDA-w

You can tweak whether you want that extra might and damage in explosions or go all the way with alchemy to get immunity to conditions when 25% health.

Overall, your goal is to stack conditions and might for damage. You do this when you swap into and out of your heal kit. Note, the runes of altruism/enhance performance and your sigil of battle all have very long durations so you should have enough stacks to make up for the relative tankiness.

As group support you provide group strength, big heals (including bomb spam), and if you wish you can change the adapt traits to provide group vigor. Lots of support there. And shield helps you have some very nice active defense.

You can also swap out med kit for healing turret. You won’t get quite as easy might stacks but the group help is better with healing turret.

Thanks, that looks interesting. Also somewhat foreign to me, I’m not even sure how I’d play it. I don’t have a lot of experience with the med kit in particular.

Any tips on sequences, when to use what, and so forth?

I’m surprised the condition damage isn’t higher with all that apothecary gear.

How well does that build hold up in solo encounters?

Thanks!

Med kit is reaaaaaaly simple. Your F1 is your primary heal and when you or a groupie needs a small heal, you drop a kit and run over it.

But the key is that you can swap into med kit and then grenades or bombs very very quickly. That counts as a “proc on heal” ability. So outside internal refresh timers, you can maximize the number of stacks of might you get in combat from:
1) swapping kits (sigil of battle)
2) proc on heal (altruism and enhanced power)

Lots of might there!

Condition damage quickly gets to about 1500 with a few might stacks and you heal really well.

my old build
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIq6d3zSiF17IyoCdmoH5n+ZZfeIXsFEC-j0BBYhBkWAkEBITtIaslWFRjVdDTHjIqWKAYmGB-w

my current one
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqalIq6dH5SiF1LJyoCdGoC5lIF6nl95xbxWQIA-j0BB4iBkWAk+AITtIaslWFRjVdDTHjIqWKAYmGB-w

both are extremely effective for me in solo/small group roaming.

edit: i highly recommend you don’t use grenade kit without grenadier.

This what I run. I solo or small group roam and really only have probs if its greater than 3 or more against me. Its easy to tag for bags etc. Course besides SD and at least 20 in tools the rest is up to you. This is just the skills etc that Ive grown comfortable with. Im sure the you can min/max better but to me, I play with I feel comfortable with, not what the general consensus may be.
It is worth noting tho, that I do research the pros/cons of each gadget/skill to get an idea of the limitations.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUlIqqd37STF1LJxIFkmzhUM47DSRe9roC5H-jkBBYfBJzUZNPVQs4qIas6aYKXER1yAwsAA-w

Ellesee, that is more or less (runes and a bit of eq) my playstyle on a condition oriented build. But if you want to be as OP’s guildies put it “impossible to kill” I think you go the elixir infused bomb route.

You can easily change out grenades for toolkit to pull/pry/bomb. I like nades even without grenadier for the conditions they add. But I agree, the one utility slot to play around with in the build is grenades. My question is what would be better? E gun and bombs are a given in a “impossible to kill” heal based build.

i like to be able to kill things. no crit and sub 1000 condition damgae with food buffs. no thanks. that’s for commanders and tpvp bunkers. and without swiftness or any kind of escape, if you find yourself outnumbers you will die.

Bombsaway.7198:

Med kit is reaaaaaaly simple. Your F1 is your primary heal and when you or a groupie needs a small heal, you drop a kit and run over it.

But the key is that you can swap into med kit and then grenades or bombs very very quickly. That counts as a “proc on heal” ability. So outside internal refresh timers, you can maximize the number of stacks of might you get in combat from:
1) swapping kits (sigil of battle)
2) proc on heal (altruism and enhanced power)

Lots of might there!

Condition damage quickly gets to about 1500 with a few might stacks and you heal really well.

Thanks. So you can basically “spam swap” between the med kit and the other kits to stack might? Interesting. Do you not actually use the med kit abilities then, just the one on the tool belt?

Also a question on gear for that build. Bear in mind I’m not suggesting I know better than you, just theorycrafting here.

Seems to me healing power doesn’t really scale all that well for the healing ability, and the condition damage (before might) is fairly low. As a test, I swapped all that apothecary gear for dire.

What the build editor suggests is that this reduces healing by 15%, but in exchange you get 23% more condition damage and 33% more vitality (about 5.5k, a very nice chunk). The only thing that I can see that takes a major hit is the elixir-infused bombs, which drops by 33% itself.

What are your thoughts on that?

Thanks for the other replies too, I will check out those builds as well.. but Bombsaway’s build is probably the one I’ll try first as it has most of what I want including running the same 3 kits I usually do. Though I might find myself swapping in the tool kit for that nice pull ability at times.

Okay just played around a bit (still just level 60). Enhance Performance seems cool but has a 10s cooldown so I’m not sure how I’m supposed to be getting huge might stacks? Also unsure on med kit versus turret if using med kit items doesn’t cause a proc-on-heal (which it appears is the case). Is the point just to separate the heal from activation of might?

Thanks.

Qaelyn.7612:

Okay just played around a bit (still just level 60). Enhance Performance seems cool but has a 10s cooldown so I’m not sure how I’m supposed to be getting huge might stacks? Also unsure on med kit versus turret if using med kit items doesn’t cause a proc-on-heal (which it appears is the case). Is the point just to separate the heal from activation of might?

Thanks.

enhance performance with sigil of battle and noble runes gives lots of might stacks. it’s like hgh without hgh. only problem is since they moved incendiary powder to master, it’s always going to be better than enhance performance for condi builds.

Okay but there isn’t any particular synergy there that I’m missing? You get stacks from Enhance Performance and sigils and other places, but not in combination or anything?

I just played with the trait that gives 3 grenades and it is much fun. So much so that I’m even reconsidering my defensive build idea.

But in order to do a lot of damage with grenades do you really need more of a power/crit build? I know they apply conditions as well, but the low-CD #1 seems to be pretty straight power.

they apply a good deal of bleeding too with shrapnel and sharpshooter traits. but yes grenade kit is good for both condition or power.

It looks as if it’s been covered but what thell.

You want to run full dire/ apoth (depending on how survivable you want to be). Nades are great for power or condi’s which is why you might be confused. Power will be more glass cannon which is why from the sounds of it you will want to run condi.

Furthermore, pistol shots are much easier to land than rifle… and the option of putting on a shield is great. Condi nades can do massive dmg as can power nades. Just a play style choice.

As far as might stacking goes it is very beneficial for condi or power…. which has great synergy with nades. If you grind out runes of the noble and go p/p full dire you can melt people as your condi dmg/ upkeep will be constant and the raw dmg of your abilities will be respectable rocking a steady 15-20 stacks of might through noble runes/ enhance performance/ sigil of battle.

These stacks will also push your condi dmg through the kittening roof… although now it would certainly be wiser to take powder over performance. You will still have a nice amount of might stacks.

With all this being said… I run zerker bombs and haven’t looked back