Guild Wars 2

I’m fairly certain Engineer can be awesome, especially for WvW in the later levels but the first 30 are a small piece of hell to grind through. I’ve started to try yet again and hope to be able to push through the level 17 barrier (for some reason this seems to be where I most frequently abandon characters).

Right now I’m at 6, using Rifle when I’m running PvE solo and Pistol/Shield when I’m with a group or WvW.

Any suggestions for making grinding through these early levels a little more tolerable?

Id say make your priority traits first 5 points in alchemy, then 5 in firearms, then 5 in inventoions, then boost alchemy up to 10.

That should give you alot more survivability. Id say for solo leveling use pistol/shield. Use Flamethrower, Grenade Kit and 1 more skill of your choice for the first 30 levels or so.

Awesome I’ll look at that. I haven’t gotten into the skills yet but I was thinking Firearms/Alchemy was the way to go.

Thanks!

I know it must seem that way because when GW2 went live Engineer was my first character and I could not get past the first 15 levels it felt horrible.

Many weeks latter and a few 80’s and I went back and started a new engineer and all I do is strafe..I just move in circles…

I play Rifle+Elixir build so B and U.

For solo PvE? Kite. Then kite some more. Then when youre done kiting, kite again. Using the rifle you should be able to prevent any melee npc from even getting near you, and if its ranged you just need to learn to dodge projectiles.

And use the Healing Turret. Drop it to heal, then pick it up right away so you effectively have a direct heal with a HoT every 15s. The Thumper Turret is also reallllly nice for soloing.

The other thing you could do is level a Mesmer to ~10 and itll make you appreciate how good Engineers have it at low levels :p

Alchemy/Elixirs are good at early levels because you dont need much skill points to get the necessary skills. They are also very easy to use. Flame thrower/bombs are good damage dealers in solo (both do AoE). Just buy masterwork equips from TP regularly if you want an easy time since they are usually sold for 1 copper more than their merchant price anyways.

Hawk> I have a mesmer who’s finally in the 50s and that was a brutal grind for the first couple dozen levels too. But after that I’m sure I can get through the first bunch with the engineer.

I’ve got grenades (I think) and the first purple elixer (which seems to be handy for staying out of range too). I’ll take a look at the healing turret.

For buffs on equipment I take it my best bet is condition damage/precision?

Thats what I did early on as well, but lately(since 60+, 80 now) I started going for more Vit/Tuf gear.

Reason being was that no matter how much I was stacking offensive stats I didnt notice an appreciable difference while soloing, especially with condition damage(we dont stack conditions high enough or for long enough to matter on anything but bosses). But I did notice a difference when I started going for defensive stats, mainly not being nearly so squishy.

So if I were to level another Engineer I would probably focus on Vit/Tuf/Prec, but take what you can get.

Grenades are nice, but I stopped using them because of how spammy it is lol. If you hold down the right mouse to turn your character with the cursor near your character, and then strafe to the side with A or D, you can spam 1 to throw grenades wherever your mouse was pointing in relation to your character(while still holding down the mouse button). And if you tilt the camera up or down without letting go of the mouse button, you can adjust range.

I mention this since even kitten circle kiting a melee npc will avoid most of their hits, even without actually dodging. – But that depends on how youre used to kiting and your control setup, and it might not be the most effective way to use Grenade kit either.

In my initial soloing experience, I focused on rifle, then around lvl 20 I went for a pistol/elixir gun build. The survivability was golden and I pretty much always felt like I had an escape plan, even focusing my equips on Power/Precision.

Much later on (I kept this build until level 60) I went for a grenade build thanks to the grenadier trait, and kept it until level 80. Now that I’m focusing on raiding and farming DEs, I went back to my beloved Elixir Gun and P/P. I can just spread conditions all around and lay down 2 healing fields that remove conditions from allies while getting the hell out of any dangerous situation with EG #4, not to mention all the elixirs and the boons lasting +30%. My current build is 0/30/0/30/10.

I leveled all the way with bomb.

Kitting with Bombs is so easy, and you do really good damage. I was using Grenade too, but click each time you attack get annoying and your fingers hurts.

Kardiamond.6952:

I leveled all the way with bomb.

Kitting with Bombs is so easy, and you do really good damage. I was using Grenade too, but click each time you attack get annoying and your fingers hurts.

There’s one tool in the Option menu called “Fast AOE Targetting” or something like that. Activating it makes it so that every AoE spell you cast is automatically cast where your mouse is pointing. So you just have to hit the attack button and the grenades go to where your cursor is. It takes a few shots to get used to it, but after you do it makes a huge difference.

My main problem with using Bombs for leveling was ranged opponents. I’d usually be too hurt when I got close to them, even using something like Slick Shoes. When it was just one ranged enemy it was ok to handle, but 2+ were a pain if they weren’t close enough to each other to hit them both with a single bomb.

Ah you guys are awesome! Lots of good ideas.

And yes I learned all about Fast AOE Targetting when I did my Elementalist. Super handy (also everyone should have auto collect on, the other way under used and uber handy setting).

Yeah I used fast targeting too, but since I was doing a lot of WvW and with grenade it’s really hard to aim with fast targeting, I was turning it off.

I agree, bomb could be tricky when used again 2+ ranged. When it was too much of a pain, I was switched to grenade.

For leveling i recommend turrets and dual pistols, i leveled fairly quick and didn’t die much when my turrets would take aggro and I would pick off the mobs with the aoe damage of the pistols.

I got up to level 12 last night and can finally use two skills which has made things infinately better. Right now I’m running Rifle with Turrets and Flamethrower. If I’m dealing with 1-2 foes the rifle is fine but I find as soon as there’s multiples a good trick is to drop the turret and then fall back behind it with the flame thrower so I can torch anything that is attacking the turret.

I find the rifle turret is far more useful than the fire one, does the smoke screen ability on the fire turret do anything at all? Is the thumper more useful than the rifle turret?

Best thing you can do is go for 100% map completion in each zone, starting with the early ones and working your way up. So, when you finish the human starting zone, don’t go to the next human zone go to the charr starting zone; then the norn, etc. THEN do the ’next’ zone for each race.

This will ensure that you’re always questing at the level cap... if you’re in an area designed level 20’s when you’re level 17, things will be tricky; if you’re level 25, you’ll be downleveled to 20, and should have no problems.

It will also keep your gear semi-up to date, which questing is notorious for not doing. I say ’semi’ because you will probably out level the gear by a decent margin; but you’ll be outleveling the zones too, so the gear should be appropriate for the zones you’re in, as opposed to your character level.

...and you’ll get a golden star next to your name, which, if kindergarten has taught us anything, is the absolute best reward EVAR! ...but no seriously, how do you turn that kitten thing off?!

[back on topic]

For traits and such... I’d go for speedy kits and med kit asap. You’re gonna be doing a LOT of running; perma swiftness is a godsend. You’ll be fine without turning yourself into a tank; get good at kiting and dodging as others have mentioned.

Also, Thumper Turret + Grenade Kit + Elixer U will have you solo clearing pulls of 5+ mobs, or veterans + a few adds.

Another trick for leveling; make NPC’s fight eachother. If some harpy throws a rock at you, and you’re standing behind an Elk or some other non-aggressive NPC, the rock will hit the Elk, which will then aggro to the harpy, and help you kill it. If you don’t overdo the DPS, the elk will pretty much act as your tank. Then since the harpy whittled down the elk’s HP, finish the elk off at the end of the fight for some extra XP and loot.

Also if you really need new gear, farm the three jumping puzzles in Lion’s Arch. You can crank all 3 out in a total of like 6 mins once you learn the paths. More often than not, you’ll just get a handful of silver in vendor trash; but often you’ll get an upgrade you can equip, or even a rare.

Group when you can, to speed things up.

What combo of skills and traits will gain perma swiftness?

Medkit #5 skill, Elixir B and Toss Elixir B along with the Elixirs last 20% longer trait. If you don’t want to waste points on some stupid traits that you wont always need or runes that you don’t want.

TabMorte.5297:

What combo of skills and traits will gain perma swiftness?

3 real easy ways. Rune set of Centaur gives AoE swiftnees for 10s wit a 10s recast on heal skill use(spammable med kit, works on swap), also adds 20% swiftness duration on top

Or speedy kits (tier 1 trait in tools) gives 5s swiftness wit 5s recast timer. Spammable with any kit

Least productive way is Medkit #5 skill, Elixir B and Toss Elixir B along with the Elixirs last 20% longer trait. Least productive because some RnG is involved to get the swiftness.

TabMorte.5297:

What combo of skills and traits will gain perma swiftness?

10 pts into tools for speedy kits, which will give you near-infinite swiftness; spam med kit #5 to fill in the gaps, and even give you a nice surplus. Med kit is good to have anyway; don’t be afraid to drop #5 in the heat of combat for the extra crit.

1. Drop rifle turret to open fight, overcharge it instantly.
2. (a) If fighting one mob, net it, run up to it, blunderbuss and Overcharge shot to blow yourself back to the turret.
2. (b). If fighting multiple, close gap with Jump, then blunderbuss and overcharge to return to turret.
3. Switch to bomb kit as enemies close, drop BoB, then Fire Bomb. FB goes off with enemies in range, you blow the turret for damage+area might, BoB goes off for knockback, more AoE damage, and another 3 stacks of might.
4. Clean up anything that survived.
5. If you must flee, medkit→swift→bandage 123 to gain HP and a bit of distance. Drop smoke bomb then Leap finisher (Jump Shot) or blast finisher (BoB or blow turret), depending on which is on cooldown. Either path gives you stealth which drops aggro.

It’s been working for me. Will work better when I get SD to put into the rotation.