Guild Wars 2

Hello folks,

I like siege warfare ever since i started doing RvR in Dark Age of Camelot back in 2001. (Man that feels like a long time ago now).
When i got Guild Wars 2 and saw the engineer class and his skills i had the impression it would be an excellent class to play for siege warfare in WvW.

Leveling is a bit slow because of real life obligations so i do not have much siege warfare experience yet. So i’d like to ask you more experienced engineers which skills you find most useful for your engineer while you’re attacking/defending keeps.

Turrets? Grenades? Mortar? Please let me know what works for you and why! (Also important: what does NOT work for you)

I have yet to do turrets or mortar for WvW – BUT I have done grenades and Flamethrower. FT was almost worthless, had to get too close and the thing missed enemies 99% of the time when they were moving. Grenades on the other hand, were good for lobbing to the top of towers to scare the defenders, or lobbing to the ground to zone them. I was able to be pretty successful without traiting them.

Good to hear, thanks. Although i really love explosions i would love to see turrets/mortar being successful for siege warfare. It would of course fit the engineer to a T so to speak.
(Hench the pun in the thread title, which is the origin of the name engineer if i remember my history correctly)

Defense: Grenades, Flamethrower, Mortar (kinda)

You can stand at your side of the gate and spam 1 with the flamethrower and constantly hit attackers. You won’t be killing anyone alone, but you’ll be helping and get credit for the kills.
You can toss grenades a fair distance from the top of the wall.

Offense: Mines, Grenades?, Mortar (kinda)

If you throw them right, you can chuck a mine onto a tower’s wall and blow an enemy off a corner. Once on the ground where they will be swiftly devoured by the horde.
Like on defense, you can toss grenades onto the wall, but I never really feel very useful while doing this.

The Mortar is… theoretically very nice. Being destructible and stationary though… it’s of limited use. Odds are that you’ll get off a few shots before the enemy gets wise and blows up the Mortar.
Besides that, the range is… pretty much a huge disappointment. Since ground targeted ranges account for vertical distance as well as horizontal, you have to subtract the height of the wall from your actual, useful range… which is most of it. You’d think you could fire further when you’re on top of the wall, but you’d be wrong.
In open field engagements, the range is about equal to the “no man’s land” distance between your group and the enemy group. Unfortunately, should the two mobs shift away from you any distance… (and they often do) the mortar becomes pretty pointless.

So what Elite to use? Hell if I know. Supply Drop can help in open field defense but it’s useless on offense. Assaulting or defending a tower, the turrets can barely shoot the distance of the wall, and are likely to break quickly.
So… racials. Unless yours are also bad in WvW, in which case use the Mortar and hope for the best.

To give the Mortar some credit, it can be really useful in tearing down build sites on an enemy wall and sometimes you can get a long run using it on top of your own wall. You just have to hope you go unnoticed.

Grenades work well. Rocket turret, if saved for 1v1’s can be an enormous crutch. For mortar discussion, see the mortar thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Mortar-range-now-with-trait-fixed/first#post329040
Generally, it is a piece of crap.
Deploy supply crate on top of the wall to stun defenders. Might give you some extra kills by initial stun/net turret forcing defenders to stay in AoE longer.