Guild Wars 2

I need help, fellow Engineers!
I play on the SBI server and main[ed] a Warrior since beta.
I feel that the class is over played and well, I hate to say it, but takes little skill to master.
In the past I made a thread saying that I was switching to Engineer as my main class.
This task is proving very difficult as I’m not used to not being able to tank and deal insane damage while having awesome heals.
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What’s a good build to level with? I’m currently level 22, about to map all the home cities to gain some easy exp and get some mapping finished.

put 10 into tools and 10 into explosives. get speedy kits and forceful explosives. run bomb/grenade/whatever. elixir s, rocket boots, elixir gun, whatever you want. spam grenades and bombs and kite things around until you’re 80.

u got the wrong way to use engy
engy isnt war who tank and take dmg whit easy heal
u need to hit-run and dodge, i got the same problem when i switched from my bunker to a cond build (good dmg but i go in the middle of battle XD )

at lvl 22 i sudjest to use medkit for heal skill (3 heal + 1 clean + 1 run) granade bomb and elixirS, pistol/shield
10trats poin on alchemy for vitality or inventions for heal and toughness

Engis are really all about that soft spot between melee and range. Master playing in and out of that area and you’ll be very good at staying alive.

Adamantium.3682:

Engis are really all about that soft spot between melee and range. Master playing in and out of that area and you’ll be very good at staying alive.

This. I assume you mostly play PvE, but there are a lot of skills that let you keep the distance from threats and foes. Glue shot (pistol #4), shield #4 (combined with a smoke field to lose aggro), shield #4, granade #4 and then granade #3 (you slow them down, and when they finally reach you, you blind them), bomb #5, bomb #4 (stand in the field).

Job done It’s all about kiting and provoking.

Well PvE or PvP. Granted in PvP there’s usually not much benefit to being in melee (even with bombs you want to try and be as far away as possible while still landing them) it certainly pays to master that “no man’s land” area.

Not sure what’s most effective but i am sure having lots of fun with my current setup.
Pistol+shield and Flamethrower + bombkit and a random 3rd. Also using healing turret for the aoe healing field.
I find this build to be quite sturdy. (with juggernout) And quite noob (me ) friendly.

A very fun class

Engineer’s best range is 130 – 600 or so, that sweet spot where all your skillshots are almost guaranteed to hit and where you have enough time to react to gap closers or hard hitting attacks. If you’re playing Bomb Kit, that range decreases to 130-240, but you get better DPS as a result.

Besides range control there is also the need for more active defenses until you get your traits online. Best trait as many people have said is Speedy Kits from 10 Tools. I wouldn’t recommend using Grenade Kit seriously until you hit 60 and get Grenadier – untraited grenades are trash unless you’re playing Condition builds and even then you’re missing 50% of your application from the lack of traited Grenade Kit.

Engineer also uses many conditions for Control – Cripple, Immobilise, Weakness, Blind – use these skills to your advantage to let yourself take on more mobs than should be possible through facetanking alone.

Remember that you are not Warrior, one of the easiest classes to play in the game. Taking hits means more pressure to use your heals – and whilst Engineer has one of the highest healing available in the game – having to use it in PVE means that you’ve usually bitten off more than you can chew.

Your basic autoattacks – unlike Warrior – are also considered to be weak. Without chain skills, featuring low coefficients and low base damage, Pistol and Rifle are not suited to spamming 1 if you want to live – chaining and comboing skills gets you so much further that it is a requirement for both your damage output and your survivability.

As others have mentioned in the thread, getting Pistol Shield for general utility and then unlocking a Kit is highly recommended. I recommend Bomb Kit to start off with – the combos are obvious. Flamethrower is “meh” at low levels, unacceptably weak at higher levels – outside of FT2, the rest of the kit is normally relegated to general utility.

For a lower APM requirement, consider using Elixirs + 1 kit. I’ll let you figure out which ones are the most useful, but keep in mind that Elixirs are at their best when traited. They are still useful at base, but improve markedly with points in Alchemy.

Lastly, learn how to animation cancel. Rifle 5, Elixir Gun 4, Rocket Boots are movement skills that benefit markedly from increased precision of movement (or in the case of Rifle 5, speed and distance) when animation canceled. Channeled skills within kits also continue channeling when you press the kit’s utility hotkey again – use this to find cross-kit or kit→ weapon skill combos that would not be otherwise possible.

Engineer is a class with a high skill ceiling that only becomes more efficient with experimentation and experience. Reaching for that ceiling is a journey that will make you better as a player.

I would also suggest picking up more professions as you go along as well. Appreciating the individual nuances and strengths and weaknesses of each class design is no less important than fully mastering a single profession.

I’m focusing on PvE atm with my engi because I don’t like WvW’ing as an upscaled character.

Also, I’m not trying to get the same effects as my warrior on my engi; I’m just stating that because I’ve played warrior so long that it feels weird not having awesome tankiness, regen, and damage output all in one.

I would like to find a build that can tank multiple enemies, whether it be PvE or PvP/WvW and also be able to kill those caught off guard or not paying attention.

Right now I use pistol/shield and Grenade Kite, Rocket Boots, Flamethrower [because I like pouring flame all over enemies o.O] I use healing turret for sustain because I’ve watched some ‘pro’ engineers that roam in WvW and they suggest using 2+ kits and healing turret so I figured that I’d try and learn the mechanics of these skills early.

I just can’t seem to grasp HOW to play the engineer. Should I be kiting 24/7? Am I supposed to just spam grenades until whatever it is I’m attacking dies? I do that in PvE, it takes a lot of attention, okay just a little, but still, more than warrior! I tried doing some WvW and enjoyed barraging people with my grenades, even without that trait you all refer to.

…Is engi the class for me? I like it, it’s fun, but I think that I screwed myself by playing nothing but warrior and thief

tl;dr Idk?

You don’t tank enemies, you kite them. Even when kiting you can still hit your enemies with bombs and grenades, which is really strong.

In PvE you can mostly abuse blinds against small enemies and use your dodge against bosses.

In PvP it get’s a lot more difficult, because grenades are harder to hit and people will not just stand in your bombs all the time, if they don’t have to.

I for one can’t stand bombs/grenades. I like the idea of the bomb kit but hate it’s execution. Endlesslessy spamming 1-5 keys while trying to move around, it’s counter-intuitive and seriously uncomfortable. The only way it becomes less awful is with key-mapping, which affects my other toons. Frankly I refuse to shell out for a razer-naga, which is the only means by which I see either of these kits becoming less awful to use.
Instead, hit the range ‘sweet-spot’ using elixir gun 4 and other controls. I have hydormancer on one of my main weapons, use those, rocket-boots and mines to control combat, when enemies get close, switch to eg, slowing them down the hydro, acid bomb out of range, trapping them in the acid for additional damage, ‘shift’ to control knockback range, then attack how I see fit.

Thankfully, OP, while engi is weak in some ways, it is extremely adaptable to personal preference. If you’re clever with builds and gear, you can probably tailor it to suit you. Smug min-maxers may scoff a bit though.
With Engi, the trick is to find skills you like, then find a way to make them work so that you can have fun with it. Key-binding will also help…
Some of the engi kits and skills are comparible with thief abilities and evasion is just as important, so you shouldn’t have too hard a time finding a setup. EG has acid-bomb which works like disabling shot but with an aoe dot at the receiving end. Toolkit has box o’ nails which is basically Caltrops. Several skills have bouncing projectiles. Bombkit can give you stealth. Your damage comes from a mix of power/condi and is fairly flexible like thief, if not more so but you have a greater range of conditions to play with.
Mitigation is slightly different in you’ll find more block skills than evades, on the upside many of them also have blast-finishers attached.

At lower levels, bomb kit would be best since it only requires an investment of 10 traits in explosives to become good (trait #3).
Once you have twenty points to invest, put twenty in fire arms and get juggernaut. Equip the flamethrower and see how you like that.
Grenade Kit won’t be great until you reach level 60 when you can actually trait Grenadier so I’d skip it for now.
Elixir Gun and Tool Kit are great utility kits but they lack the AOE attacks that the other kits have so I don’t use them in PvE to do damage.

I would get condition based armor, trinkets, weapons, sigils, and runes. IMHO, power based builds for engis don’t become viable until you can trait for them and these are higher up in the trait line. If you’re going condi, try equiping Pistol/Pistol. I’d eventually advice you to move to Pistol/Shield but for leveling in PvE, P/P should be fine.

A few tips:
- Blind. Take advantage of your blinds. Most NPCs project their attack really well giving you time to either dodge or blind them. Pistol #3, BK #4, FT #5… cycle through this and you should be able to take on mobs with only minimal damage.
- Burn and Confusion. Engineers have two main sources of condition damage. That’s burning and then there’s confusion. Bomb Kit #2 and #3 if you land it and have good condition damage should kill most trash mobs by themselves. Pistol/Pistol also has confusion (#3) and burning (#4). You can use the glues in BK #5 and P/P #5 to immobilize and land your attacks more easily. No need to spam. Just land your conditions and watch them melt. Experiment on combos to chain these attacks. At higher levels when you have traited for grenades, you can add bleeding to this list.