Guild Wars 2

I’m looking at this from an spvp perspective, and this is my observations. I reserve the right to be biased, annoyed, and flat out wrong. If I am wrong, please explain why with facts, builds, and links, rather than soliloquies about how you can kill everyone and never die.

In pve, engineer is great because of it’s sheer number of buttons to push. But what can we do in pvp? Right now, I see 3 builds, with most engineers running them or minor variations.

Static Discharge- One of our two high burst builds, it can do good damage at mid to long range, with options for close range escapes or even more long range damage. It’s rather lacking in survivability against 2 or more foes, and can often be taken down in one to two strong burst attacks from a thief or warrior.

Hundred ’nades- Our other burst build, it focuses on the grenade kit and kit refinement to drop targets in one go (referring to one cooldown cycle). It is usable at long range, but loses out on its biggest burst if it remains outside of… Really intimate contact, it goes beyond entering melee range. It tends to lose against sustained damage, especially ranger sb/lb when you can’t reach them quickly for your burst.

TANKCAT- Of the three, the only one with an intense focus on survivability. It loses out on direct damage, burst damage, and really damage in general. It tends to perform best against glass cannon burst builds, but can’t overcome high condition removal. It is incredibly difficult to kill, with up to 14 seconds of straight invulnerability on a relatively short cooldown. It also has access to and a focus on the prybar, which is awesome.

P/P hgh I could never use to any effect, so yeah.

Now, the question is, are there any other viable builds? Flamethrower-mightstacking tends to be low on the damage to survivability, Elixir gun… Nevermind the elixir gun, bomb kit requires you to be up next to people, making it horrible at chasing/damaging people with access to wasd, gadget-rifle build inevitably becomes a static discharge, elixir rifle doesn’t have high enough damage, and our turrets are sadder than the portal 2 equivalent.

Right, just toss your ideas/opinions/potential flame below, I’m all ears.

You forgot about bunker builds. Whatever it is pistol / shield or with rifle, those builds usualy use bomb kit, elixir R and something. I myself am using 4 kit bunker / support (thats what I call it) with flamethrower, tool kit and elixir gun + pistol / shield. Not sure why you said nevermind elixir gun, its an amazing weapon. You can apply slow on enemies and quickness on allies with one skill, weakness and bleed with another, poison and vulnerability and in the same time you take conditions of your allies. With kit refininment two light fields which can heal you and your allies and take conditions down also + 4th skill is amazing for holding graveyard or runing away. Btw keeping poison on enemy by pistol and elixir gun is great stuff how to slowly make him die.

Survability is very ok with it, good players with dps builds can bring me down rather quickly (2v1 or 3v1) if I fail to use right skills, but thats just an engineer, fail to press the right button, you know it. Maybe I’ll find out its not viable much, so far it worked just fine for me. And I’m having tons of fun having 2 or 3 people on me while holding point and trying to blow them away, cap the point and stay alive.

I think engineer has many possibilites people just need to know to find a way how to use them with team or how it works for them. For ex. I’ve seen one very decent turret bunker, but it was only once.

Condi-Burst seems to always be flying under the radar and yet has been played by Powerr, Hiba, and Teldo to great effect in tPvP. I’ve been running a similar build as my main since pretty much launch, and after dropping the Bomb Kit while picking up Geomancy it’s been even more effective.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-VRR;0B-Z-Vg0u5FQFx0;9;4T9-T-49A5;319A;1a-1;11-hoHAhoHA2ZJ

It’s run with Rampager Amulet sometimes as well for an ounce more of damage at the cost of a decent chunk of survival. The overall build performs a lot of condi-dmg, and can shred many bunkers through their condi-removal by simply overloading it. Can even handle Bunker Ele’s and Empathic Bond, even if those are a bit over the top in terms of removal.

Basic idea is to run in with pistol cooldowns and land a close Blowtorch, swap to Grenade Kit for Geomancy, and then point blank land three Shrapnel Grenades. It puts out 2k to 3k direct damage in just those two_globals_, while applying 1.5k damage per second of pressure, and if left uncleansed would be greater then 20k damage. That doesn’t even count the Poison, Confusion, and multitude of other things you are doing. Severely underestimated, and with a Rabid Amulet and Elixir S it actually has decent survival.