Guild Wars 2

I’m a fairly new player. I had NO IDEA how complex Engineer was going to be when I hit level 80. I’m big into PvP—both WvW and sPvP. I realize that there is no right or wrong way to play Engineer since there are so many options.

Observations about Engineer:
—Not a huge fan of sporting a rifle
—Not a fan of the Elixer Gun, but can be fun
—Love Grenades but carpal tunnel nightmare
—Love Flamethrower but range is crap

That said, I think I’ve decided on going dual pistol. Since sPvP will be my main focus, it seems legit. However……

I’m about to purchase my first set of Exotic Gear; I cannot decide.

IF I’M GOING DUAL PISTOLS:
—Do I want to go full Berserker’s and stack crit?
—Do I want to go full Carrion/Rampager and go for conditions?

I’m leaning towards conditions, but IF I go crit (i.e. Berserkers) I do have the option to use nades in WvW or Dungeons/PvE stuff.

I seriously cannot decide. I would appreciate some feedback from experienced engineers before I drop all my gold on armor/weapons/runes/trinkets/etc.

tl;dr Newb Engineer needs armor/gear advice

If you are talking about purchasing gear in spvp it doesn’t matter since its all free. However if your going to play p/p mostly you want to take condition damage, not power.

the smaller the group the more toughness you’ll want. berserk works very well with rifle. you generally want to use pistols for condi builds and rifle for power build. pistols on power build arent very good. if you are so keen on going dual pistols, condi build is the way to go. my main go to gear is berserker power build with rifle/nades. nades can hit VERY hard with power builds. i generally use grenades/bomb kit for pve and toolkit for wvw roaming. of course if you are in a zerg, there are some very nice flamethrower builds out there

Unless you absolutely know you’re good at staying away from getting hit and know how to get hits off without dying, don’t go zerker or rampagers. get at least some toughness or vitality.

If you’re going for conditions I would mix Carrion with Rabid instead of Rampager. You don’t need all that excess precision and the toughness will help you to keep relatively glassy traits without being too squishy. Also, your damage will be very high since you’ll have a ton of condition damage.

That said, I think the best choice is to simply get several sets of gear. One of the best aspects of being an engineer is having so many builds to choose from and multiple gearsets will make swapping around that much easier. My first gearset after hitting 80 was soldier’s but after that I made a condition set using Carrion/Rabid -and now I’m working on a set of Celestial gear (which I’ve already tested in PvP, by the way, and it works great for bunker builds ). I actually have an entire bank tab devoted to my engineer and all his stuff. lol

By the way, you can get Rabid gear through karma from Orr temples which will help cut down the cost of getting fully geared so you can buy a second set with the money you save.

Thanks all for the tips! Definitely going to spec conditions after reading your comments. I might do a power/rifle build later with full Berserkers, but seems like if I’m doing pistols it would be best to do conditions.

The key to running a Condi build is to be able to survive long enough for the Condi’s to work. So make sure that the armor you select has some toughness and/or vitality. Also, Superior Rune of the Undead is a pretty good and economical selection for a Condi build.

I would avoid traits in Fire Arms, and focus on Explosions, Alchemy and Inventions.

My preference is Carrion armor for my Condi.