Guild Wars 2

Hey there Engineers!

This is the debut of my experimental rifle-explosion build that I’ve nicknamed ‘Sapper’.

I’m new to the sPvP world, but one thing I noticed about Engineers in my short time here was that many players find us to be replaceable, or next to useless. We’re assumed to be only viable as a defensive/bunker profession for node holding. We’re told that if we wanted to run burst or condition — or whatever the build may be — some other profession does better than us twofold.

Of course many Engineers have proved otherwise, but something about the commonly used builds out there never clicked for me. It was either boring for me or I just lacked the skill to preform well.

It was then that I decided to create the ‘Sapper’ build.

Once I roughly put together a decent build that seemed promising I immediately queued for tournaments. The video above is a montage of my attempts to fine tune and excel with this build. In the end I finally created a reliable build that I was proud of and could stand its ground. I tried my best to show the better 1v1 fights with the build so you could see how well it preformed on its own.

I realize that I’m not the best Engineer out there, but hopefully you gave the video a shot. Any feedback or questions are appreciated and I hope my ridiculous intermissions didn’t bother you too much.

Build and tactics:

The latest build I used in my more recent matches as shown in the video is linked to above. After going through my build, possibly one of the first few things going through your mind was how much emphasis I had on defense despite my video’s spiel about not being a defensive or bunker build. Bear in mind that I am taking two damage kits and my final utility slot is reserved for ‘encounter’ purposes (which in most cases is Elixir B to start a match.)

Despite the fact that I showcased many 1v1 fights, this build is not designed for that. So why did I show footage of me 1v1’ing all those people instead of the true purpose of this build? It was because I wanted to prove that this build just isn’t good for dying. Which is quite literally what I do in sPvP repeatedly for good reason.

It doesn’t matter what the fight is, this build is designed to take them head on and be annoying as hell. You can even kill people with it as the video proves. Most of my fights are centered around me roaming and barraging poorly managed nodes with huge amounts of firepower and explosives and dying because I end up drawing the attention of 2-3 of their team to that area.

So how does this help you? Well first of all, you’re not dying in moments like 95% of the sPvP population would due to their setup. You have ridiculous amounts of health, conditions removers, and toughness to survive comfortably against 1-2 people or even 3 depending on if you’re willing to ditch the node for a few moments.

The goal of the build is to push people off their nodes long enough to contest or possibly even take them. The amount of time they’re not gaining points because of a contested/taken node creates a huge gap in the entire minute or two you stay alive drawing their attention. If two of their team is wailing on you with as much power as they can get, that means only three of their team is combating against your other four. And many times if you’re handy enough you can kill them and take their node.

So to take full advantage of this build you have to be Bach on your keyboard. You have to compose an orchestra of death and demolition by constantly CC’ing your enemy with the arsenal available to you.

A basic fight with you assaulting a node would include you dropping their energy bar before the battle even begins with a barrage of #1 Grenade. You can even drop a #4/chill in the second throw if you’re feeling lucky. Your first move would probably be to dodge into the node and drop a BoB to scare them away. By then their energy bar will be almost at one tick or already there, causing them to dodge out immediately or put up something that protects them. If they dodge out, keep them out with a net or firepower. If they protect themselves, immediately switch to Bomb Kit and use #4 to drop a smoke field that reapplies blind for the next 3 seconds. The most common tactic after they regain a normal status is to burst you down as hard and fast as possible.

Creativity is what wins this fight. You have a stun immediately available via Supply Crate which also drops med packs early in the fight for when they try to burst you down. You can also drop #3 Bomb Kit since you possibly are already in the kit so you can apply some confusion on that pesky melee who dishes out fast attacks. You can even drop a Glue Bomb immediately followed by grenade barrage if you’d like.

The idea is to win out by keeping them off their node with heavy damaging explosives and marksmanship. Don’t forget that killing your enemy doesn’t necessarily mean that you win. If you lost in the end but kept that node contested for a minute while your team was the only one with an active node, you wreaked some serious damage.

There’s no cookie cutter way of winning every fight. There are too many variables and the only way to succeed is by practicing and understanding your build mechanics. Adjust tactics as you go as well; that’s why the third utility slot has been nicknamed ‘encounter slot’ by me.

As many people have said, I am an amateur at sPvP and I possibly wasn’t even fighting excellent players. On average most people I was fighting in the video were rank 30+. That probably doesn’t constitute much, but I personally felt if at rank 7-9 I was doing that well then there’s only room for improvement.

With all that said, good luck Engineers. I hope you find the ‘Sapper’ build to be as fun as I think it is. If you have any questions or want more details on tactics (I didn’t want to overdo the wall of text) please feel free to ask.

Pretty good video, shows the versatility that the engineer has. Interested in seeing your build/tactics writeup.

You REALLY need to start dodging more.

You REALLY need to start dodging more.

Definitely a great point you brought up. I noticed that myself when I reviewed my first fights and did my best to fix it in my more recent tournaments. If you look at the segments where I was rank 7 and rank 9 you’ll see the huge amount of improvement on kit switching and dodging. (My shoulder armor changes if the number is too obscured for you to read on the video from rank 7 to 9.)

I know personally the lack of dodging was because I was overwhelmed by how many keys I have to press in a fight. After I got used to my build a bit more, dodging became easier since I was able to observe the fight better instead of staring at my hotkeys to ensure I was doing everything right.

I really like your video. I’m running a power-crit build with nades myself. One really useful tip: Net your target before you use grenade barrage, you’ll get a sure full hit. I easily get 7k-8k with the barrage if the target isn’t a bunker, if it is i get “only” 4k. Engineers are a really versatile and fun class, i guess people just need to be a little more creative.

One piece of advice I’d like to give: Turn on “Fast-cast ground targeting”. It removes all those slight delays when you bring up the circles.

All that’s required is a lil mouse awareness.

GuilguiS.2738:

I really like your video. I’m running a power-crit build with nades myself. One really useful tip: Net your target before you use grenade barrage, you’ll get a sure full hit. I easily get 7k-8k with the barrage if the target isn’t a bunker, if it is i get “only” 4k. Engineers are a really versatile and fun class, i guess people just need to be a little more creative.

I always find myself using that tactic when a target is further away or after a BoB explosion (not sure if it was showcased well in the video). But I also found a good tactic with it is to hide it within your bomb explosions when a melee such as a thief or warrior is charging at you. Many skilled players know to dodge our grenades but they can’t dodge what they can’t see. Those rangers with infinite amounts of dodge though, man, I just guesstimate where they’ll be and toss the barrage based on their movement patterns.

Tassle.7810:

One piece of advice I’d like to give: Turn on “Fast-cast ground targeting”. It removes all those slight delays when you bring up the circles.

All that’s required is a lil mouse awareness.

You know, I turned it off when I first played grenades because I wasn’t very comfortable with the range or radius of the explosions. I definitely should try that now that I’ve been using grenades for a while. Thanks for that reminder, wouldn’t have even considered it unless you mentioned it.