Guild Wars 2

EDIT: The original creator of this handbook, to whom we are very grateful, has turned over this project to another GW2 player. Please see this site to follow the updated and continuing Engineer Handbook.

What is the Engineer Handbook?
The Engineer Handbook is a large Engineer guide covering almost everything Engineer related.

The Engineer Handbook features:

1. General Information
2. The Engineer
3. Weapons
4. Skills
5. Traits
6. Runes
7. Sigils
8. Food
9. Blast Finishers and Combo Fields
10. Combos
11. Tricks
12. Builds

All exclusively for the Engineer profession! It will always remain up to date (as I will be adjusting it when ArenaNet adds/changes stuff) thus you can never go wrong with this one!

Why did you create this handbook?
I enjoy helping people in games, I have always done in it in every game I played and now I am doing it in Guild Wars 2 (for quite a while already too be honest). I always noticed that there was a lot of info scattered on so many different websites which were all just small snippets. I wanted to have all this information in one place so I started writing and came up with.. well the Engineer Handbook.

Requests? Tips? Feel free to tell me!
I am open for improving the handbook as much as I can, do you struggle with something and did the handbook not explain how it worked? Well feel free to request this in the Guild Wars 2 comment section or the handbook comment section and I will start working on it. The goal is to have everything there is to the profession in the handbook!

I hope you guys find the Engineer Handbook useful as well as a great read. Feel free to tell me any grammar mistakes I made, English is not my main language so there could be a few errors in there. I also accept donations, it’s not required or anything and I don’t really need it to keep the website up (as the ads will help me with that) but I still offer you guys the option, it is still is very very very very much appreciated.

You can donate to me by scrolling to Chapter 1 in the Engineer Handbook.

The shield is our defensive yet offensive weapon, we can only use this weapon in our offhand (no double shield madness, sorry) and therefore only give us two skills.

nooooOOOOoooo

quaggan sad.

Awesome awesome. Thank you a lot. I wish I seen this before I spent a lot of time on the Engineer. I love the engineer and are just now getting decent at might and stealth giving among other thins.

A request maybe, but maybe too specific for you to spend time on. I am trying to get my pistol ap for 5000 kills. I found it pretty weak, although with adjust traits its better. What do you think is a build that has max pistol DPS with no regard to anything else? Just max pistol damage. That might include food, armor, runes, etc.

I’m not Wolfineer, but I think if I would want to only kill things with pistols in open world PvE, I would probably go for something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqalUUpkrtdxvLseNCbBNyxEGQ3hNEiP+wAA-TBSEABIoEUG1fI4EAAgJoR0DIlyvW2fo5HAApAgZOA-e

It has tons of bleeding, perma-burning, some AoE/tagging-potential too, and very good mobility.

Edit: I’m actually not sure if kills with kits count as kills with your mainhand weapon; that’s why I didn’t include grenade kit or so and went full pistol instead.

Did read it all, and even after 1 year of 99% playtime on engi I could learn some titbits. Thank your for this, wolfrar. This will help so many people and improve the overall skill-floor of the engineer, if not even increase the amount of people rolling for engi

Edit:
Could a mod please sticky this thread, or at least the link to the engineer-handbook?
It should be on top of the page to all times.

There are a lot of grammatical and spelling errors in this. Just some stuff I noticed:

1. This Page
   1. The Engineer profession is the mechanical profession in Guild Wars 2, we make use of Turrets, Kits, Gadgets and Elixirs to aid us in battles. This should be two sentences.
   2. The turrets allow for strong defense of a position like the capture points in PvP, they are also often used for their utility instead of their damage. This should, too.
   3. The Kits is what the profession is really all about, you will often see atleast one kit in builds and sometimes even three. Two sentences and “atleast” should be “at least”.
2. There’s a mistake in the description of the pros and cons of AED. It says it doesn’t remove conditions, but this was recently updated.

There’s a lot of stuff actually xD. Way too many to list them all.

I’ll just stick to some tricks you left out:

1. For Med Kit – For med kit, you can leave the packs on the ground if you know a fight will be coming to you, allowing for a huge heal and some condition removal to be waiting for you.
2. For Flamethrower – A negative is that flamethrower procs retaliation like crazy for almost no benefit.
3. Rocket Boots – “(-) Has a moderate long cooldown.” 25s and 20s when traited is long?
4. Supply Crate – “(-) Barely any use in PvE.” What? It’s a 6k heal, stun, and some stuff to take the AoE off of people for a couple seconds.
5. Traits When describing Reserve Mines and Evasive Powder Keg, it would be good to mention that they will reveal you if stealthed. This confused me for a while because I would seemingly be randomly revealed after using Elixir S to escape from enemies. The trick is to dodge, wait a second, THEN throw elixir S.
6. Regenerating Mist → Any Blast Finisher – Don’t forget that leap finishers work too! (Jump Shot)
7. Magnet Cancelling – Just another additional tactic I use with this is I’ll immediately follow up with net shot if they are far and overcharged shot if they are close. It’s also good to mention that this is a great way to test the waters of your enemies. If they dodge, they’re at least semi competent!
8. Acidic Elixirs – I think you give this too much credit. It really only works against melee targets. The radius for Acidic Elixirs is super tiny so you basically have to decide on using it for the boon strip only, the boons or getting into melee range of something to remove the boon. It’s also not even guaranteed that you’ll get the boon you want off like stability on warriors! I’m not saying its 100% bad, but these bits of information should be there so they know what they’re getting into.
9. For Stomping, There are a few more stomps you can utilize:
   1. Block Stomp – Cancel the stomp with F and hit your block (gear shield or Magnetic Shield). Restart the stomp. Works on guardians, rangers, engis, necros and warriors
   2. Turret Stomp – Stand in back of a turret that you either place, is from an ally or is from your crate. This will block the projectiles of engineers and warriors.
   3. Big Ol Bomb Stomp – Place the big ol bomb in front of the enemy. Dodge to the other side of the enemy. Begin the stomp and they will be blown right past you. Works on mesmers, thieves, eles (I think)…pretty much everything.
10. To help kill condition necros, play it! The more you known about how it works, the better you can predict what they will do. Necros use doom at very specific times:
    1. To open up a chain when they are already in DS.
    2. To save themselves after they are CCed by you in some way.
    3. After YOU dodge. (This is advanced players only).
    4. If you know they are going to do it at these moments, try dodging and you will very likely dodge it!
11. The last thing it teaches you to counter is Longbow Axe/Shield, but that’s really not common. Axe/Sword is way more deadly and way more common.

Sent you a PM with some little grammatical errors and typos I’ve spotted while quickly looking at it.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

There are a lot of grammatical and spelling errors in this. Just some stuff I noticed:

Thank you for correcting me, I adjusted it in the post. English is not my main language so I do make quite a few mistakes still but it is great to get corrected so I can learn from my mistakes. I also changed some things around in the skill descriptions as you are right about most of them!

Thank you so much for this. I read your website too. This is really awesome.

Great work man! I just must you reccomend optimalize pictures – size and quality it slows loading and scrolling as hell:-)

Great work! Will share the love around as research material for students

Sarah

Awesome guide ^-^.

Noticed a small error though – theres a light field on toss elixir R too, which you dont mention in your combo fields area

Spyritdragon.6048:

Awesome guide ^-^.

Noticed a small error though – theres a light field on toss elixir R too, which you dont mention in your combo fields area

Oh that’s right! Nice catch, will adjust it!

first, great guide from just having skimmed over it. I am sure I will learn some new things as I am working on getting my ascended gear and putting together a good build for higher level fractals.

That said, one thing I looked for but did not see what runes and sigils. I know those arent engineer specific items, but would be really nice to have a gear section, even a brief one.

That Guy.5704:

first, great guide from just having skimmed over it. I am sure I will learn some new things as I am working on getting my ascended gear and putting together a good build for higher level fractals.

That said, one thing I looked for but did not see what runes and sigils. I know those arent engineer specific items, but would be really nice to have a gear section, even a brief one.

Will do that in the future as well as consumables. I am working on a lot more additional information which I will add to it as a ‘patch’.

I just went to your site since I have an engineer main but I get a “page not found” for the guide. Did you take it down for updating or something?

yea, something on his site moved, that link doesnt work, go here http://www.wolfineer.com/the-engineer-handbook/

joe.7684:

I just went to your site since I have an engineer main but I get a “page not found” for the guide. Did you take it down for updating or something?

It used to have the date created in the url which I found quite pointless. So instead of having the date there I decided to remove this from all my urls. Sorry for the confusion!

OLD: http://www.wolfineer.com/DATEHERE/the-engineer-handbook/
NEW: http://www.wolfineer.com/the-engineer-handbook/

Update #1 is now live. Check for information what changed in this reddit post or the changelog.

A video showing off everything is also live which you can find here.

Michael Henninger.7451:

Wolfar,

I finally got off my kitten and read this guide. There is some magnificent material here. I’ll be testing some of this today. Say hi if you see me in game (mehenninger.2867).

let the stalking begin

Overlord Colin Johanson needs to see this, since he’s also a fellow Engi!

Awesome job, Wolfineer! Even just skimming it I can see the sheer amount of time, effort, research, and experimentation this took! I’ll try to find time throughout the week to tackle this entire guide to see what else I can learn about the profession.

Much love from a fellow Engi!
Malchior

Michael Henninger.7451:

Wolfar,

I finally got off my kitten and read this guide. There is some magnificent material here. I’ll be testing some of this today. Say hi if you see me in game (mehenninger.2867).

Oh my goodness a dev response

What year is it? And where am I?

Very cool, I just finished get an engi to 80 and will reference this a lot. Thanks for the hard work!

Xae Isareth.1364:

What year is it? And where am I?

It’s 2014, and you’re here in the Engineer subforum of the official Guild Wars 2 forums. You’re welcome.

was just reading this over… since when is flamethrower stronger than bombkit?

oh my god a red post in a profession subforum

Michael Henninger.7451:

Wolfar,

I finally got off my kitten and read this guide. There is some magnificent material here. I’ll be testing some of this today. Say hi if you see me in game (mehenninger.2867).

does this mean it’ll get stickied, bout time engi forums had a sticked tutorial.

Azure.8670:

was just reading this over… since when is flamethrower stronger than bombkit?

If you are going for a Grenadier spec (pretty much the current ‘meta’ for PvE), you will be using the Flamethrower as the damage is higher with it than the Bomb Kit’s damage. This is because of Flame Blast (which also is a blast finisher). The autoattack from the Bomb Kit easily beats the damage from the Flamethrower but since the damage from the Grenade Kit beats the damage from the Bomb Kit (this is due to vulnerability), we will use the Flamethrower instead.

If you don’t have the Grenade Kit on your bar, the Bomb Kit will inflict more damage (as you will be using the autoattack from the bomb kit) than the Flamethrower does. Also, if you read about the flamethrower I mention that the damage is lower than that of the Grenade and Bomb Kit.

‘(-) The damage is quite low when you compare it to the Grenade Kit and Bomb Kit.’

EDIT: it also highly depends on what type of content you play.

Hey wolfrar, I’d like you to test this build in sPvP. I guess you’ll like it
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpWr9Zx+KseRCbBNqwAyJcBRuxq8xGEAA-TJBBwAVeAAAuAA42fAcZAA
It’s nothing I’d propose as meta, but definitively the most fun build I was running recently. the runes you can easily to swap to hoelbrak or balthazar, depending on what fits your preferences the most.

the idea is to spam burning on all ranges, ignoring condi-clears since you can re-apply it so frequently and reliably. triggering IA with rifle AA is awesome for downing people that try to rest f.e., along with all the blast / leap-finishers you can stack might for your group easily as well, or provide stealth to prevent / execute stomps.
bombkit brings awesome aerial denial and BoB, overcharged shot, Air Blast, gluebomb and netshot bring all the cc you need to decap a point against multiple defenders.

Even tho you have some bursts, for me it feels that you lack the condi-spam from nades or the high-yield burst-chains provided by other builds, but the above-average sustained dmg on this build clears points fast and effectively.

we got a stickyyy!!

all hail wolfineer! (and micheal)

Awesome! Thank you devs! I already wondered where my post went

Only took a month for a mod to do this^^
Ty anyways, finally we can send all FAQ to this thread and handbook specifically.

Thanks for the work Wolfar, a nice compendium for starting engi players.
Any plans to include an underwater section?

Mork vom Ork.2598:

Thanks for the work Wolfar, a nice compendium for starting engi players.
Any plans to include an underwater section?

Thank you!

Hmm, I am not sure yet about an underwater section. I mean the underwater combat isn’t great for the Engineer and you want to avoid it as much as possible. I could include the speargun into the weapons section though which should be enough for underwater combat.

Wolfar.6508:

Mork vom Ork.2598:

Thanks for the work Wolfar, a nice compendium for starting engi players.
Any plans to include an underwater section?

Thank you!

Hmm, I am not sure yet about an underwater section. I mean the underwater combat isn’t great for the Engineer and you want to avoid it as much as possible. I could include the speargun into the weapons section though which should be enough for underwater combat.

a lot of stuff works significantly differently underwater… nades are auto (and can attack backwards… not different but significant), bombs have very small aftercast. probably the best thing to do underwater is put utilities that arent normally on your bar on your underwater bar so you can blow the kit/toolbelt cds in a pinch… its nice to get eg stunbreak and spam medkit junk for a bit when i happen to walk into water, and speargun 5 / bomb 5 / BoB help to deter chasers when i dont normally have those.

Ahh! I would like to read it but there is an Internal Error on the webpage: “Internal Server Error 500.” I’ma try out Engineer anyways will be back when it comes back up <3

broFenix.1632:

Ahh! I would like to read it but there is an Internal Error on the webpage: “Internal Server Error 500.” I’ma try out Engineer anyways will be back when it comes back up <3

Fixed now, there were a few errors in the coding.

Thank you Wolfar!!!! INDEED this is a great guide oh my god! I’m falling in love with Engineer, I love you guys!

Huge site update as well as the Engineer Handbook. For more information, check this post.

gonna be reading this because i feel like i suck at this class and its the only one i like haha XD

The website is down. Hopefully a temporary thing?

he wrote in twitter, that his provider is working on solution

The Engineer Handbook is updated with the Scrapper information! You can find new information in the ‘Weapons’, ‘Skills’ and ‘Traits’ sections. Do keep in mind everything is subject to change after BWE3.

Also, I have more information on the Scrapper in rather large video (and article) where I analyse the scrapper. Check it out right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp4xQBFRaxY

As of March 3, 2016, The Engineer Handbook is officially being maintained by me. Wolfineer has stopped playing Guildwars 2 and passed it off to me.

The new website URL is : http://www.sheriffsauer.com

I’ll be updating it and posting builds, along with videos. Thank you!
- Sauer

sheriffsauer.com is gone. Domain expired on 3/1/2017. No point in this sticky anymore.