Guild Wars 2

Hi, a little about myself. I’ve been playing Warrior since I was in the womb.
Now that everyone and their mother is playing the class, I’d like to switch to the least played class, aka Engineer.

I’ve mastered the Warrior class and feel it’s time to move on to a least played and somewhat more difficult class. This is where the Engineer comes into play.
I’m looking for some tips/advice and/or suggestions on what to do and how to do it.

I enjoy PvP in the form of s/tPvP and WvW, with some PvE [mostly dungeons/bosses] sprinkled in. I’m looking for any builds that allow me to do multiple thingss, with WvW being the focus.

Wishlist:
Build able to perform the following:
Solo roam WvW and survive, maybe win a 1vX battle
Able to assist in Zergs if needed
Perform well in dungeons

tl;dr warrior main since pre-release switching to engi, need versatile yet viable build that can switch from wvw to pve

Doesnt come much more cookie cutter than this:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqic3zyuF1LJxoCdGUh8KSBmt8nHyltpF-jkCB4iCh0CIk0gkIAZqFRjtGsIasKZpWdDTHTIyYuIa1CBoYOA-w
You’ll want a Carrion/Rabid gear set with a different runeset for true PvE, but this build and setup will take you through anything in WvW. For zerging swap in grenades for either toolkit or elixir gun and change the last explosions trait to Grenadier.

Check out wolfineers stuff for guide on the build =)

Good on ya dude,
just a heads up though Eng takes a while to master. There is so much depth to the class, builds vary a lot and can be pretty diverse. My advice is to start with kits you enjoy or like the look of and try them out.
also if you haven’t already got it to 80 you cant really make builds as you level, so you wont discover its full potential til level the end.
just stick with it and you’ll be fine.

in terms of a build i personally enjoy a celestial eng with 30/30/0/0/10
concentrating on condis incendary powder and grenadier traits in explosives and increased damage from modified ammo in firearms.
perplexity runes, corruption and tormenting
then speedy kits, always take that. Even for leveling.
hope that helps
pistol shield and nades, bombs, thumper turret, healing turret and supply crate.
blast finishers will allow you to do soooo much

I’d suggest you try:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqalIqiYH5SfF1LJyoCdGoC5lIF6nl95xbxWQIA-TkAAzCpI0SplTLjWStsaNXA

It’s fairly squishy but if you time your blinds and blocks it’s perfectly fine.
It has AMAZING damage and will be able to deal with pretty much everything 1v1 or 1vX depending on what you face(obviously requires them to be stupid since no one should lose a Xv1 fight no matter the class).

For sigils you can any of them but i prefer geomancy and battle but energy can work too if you getting focused alot, also been experimenting with hydromancy but i don’t like it too much. Can also swap out the pistol off hand for shield if you prefer having some more CC/survivability(i prefer the damage added from pistol).

It’s my favourite spec in s/tPvP and it also function fantastically in WvWvW from my own experience , however in s/tPvP if i’m filling the far point assaulting role i prefer the “teldo” build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIq6Zn1ShF1LJxoCdGUh8KSh+t8nHyltpF-TkAAzCpI0SplTLjWStsaN6A
You can swap out adventurer’s runes for Nightmare and protection injection for invigorating speed + get smoldering on off hand for extra long burns.
Might not be as strong as it used to be due to vigor nerf and the rise of Warriors but i still rather play that than any of the new pure decap builds(not gonna link them since i hate them too much)

Edit: perplexity runes might be awesome in the first build if you swap out pistol for shield in WvWvW(i don’t have a shield so i can’t try)

power/bruiser
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUlIqic37SiF1LJSIF239BqgeJqg+95xb1WQIA-jUCBYfBh+IIJQFRjtMqIas6aYKXCyqYJ1aO1G0DRTGglFA-w

hybrid HGH
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/HGH-power-nades-wvw-vids/first#post3333718

you know, so you dont get the idea that engi has to be condi or that rifle sucks or anything. cuz they dont. and it doesnt.

how to play?
hmm.. well just use rocket boots a lot and try not to autoattack. and dont spam the pots all at once in the hgh build.

a 1 kit build shouldnt be too far off your mad warrior skillz, but itll take some time to get used to using a 2-4 kit build (…and a real heal). kits are versatile and useful enough that youll prolly want at least 2 in a good build.

insanemaniac.2456:

… (…and a real heal)…

Get used to the the Med Kit and Healing Turret. Practice with em. More often than not, HT will be your go-to heal. Learn to drop it, overcharge it, and blast the field. Actually, a major strength of Engi is the ability to drop a variety of combo fields (especially water & fire) and blast the crap outta them.

Be prepared for a learning curve. Playing an engineer is considerably more complex than playing a warrior (2nd only to elementalists, in my opinion).

Having both an engineer and elementalist, I find the engineer a little more complex depending on the build you choose to play. Self combos are a huge part of the play and condi removal can be tricky.

Picture the playstyle you really want to try and there are likely a few different builds that will be different but still accomplish the same thing. From your wishlist, it looks like you’ll want a hybrid style of build with more focus on power (PVE). Maybe look into what the bomb kit has to offer and pack a lot of blast finishers for the might stacks.

As a general rule for all classes, if you run the same build in both PvE and wvw then your already playing a subpar build. The good thing is retraiting costs less than 5 silver and takes all of 30 seconds. So please be a decent player and don’t purposely underperform in 2 areas of the game just to save a total of like 1g per month.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUnIElraALGvg9ikYkCPPaQKybfFpoyX+TB6D-TgAg1ETpmyNlZK5U2pGjA

Enemies can’t do anything

There are amazing engineers and there are horrible engineers. amazing engineers are nearly invincible, but that can be said for an amazing player of most professions. The effort/skill/reward curve for engineer is a lot less friendly then other professions. Good luck, if you want to do all those things you want using a warrior as comparison, you are probably going to end up less then thrilled.

For some jumping str8 into a three kit build is a bit much.

If you’re just starting out on eng and want something somewhat similar to other classes, I would start out with a HgH build. They typically only have one kit and then elixirs.

After that move onto a two kit build then a three kit build.

I’ve had a few friends try this and found that it helped them progressively learn eng and helped them to learn how to juggle kits/cds.

I just want to commend you on this thread. I have lots of respect for wanting to get away from the FOTM Warrior and try out another profession. Even moreso when it’s my favorite one!

http://youtu.be/lPtLpd7vnPM
a link to my build with some advice.
had a lot of requests about it.
first real video so constructive criticisms would be appreciated

FreekPalmer.2839:

http://youtu.be/lPtLpd7vnPM
a link to my build with some advice.
had a lot of requests about it.
first real video so constructive criticisms would be appreciated

For wvw I could see this working although I’ve never tried it. In pve, celestial has never been and will never be viable. Now the problem with advertising this build is because critical damage is about to get nerfed. Berserker is predicted to take about a 10% loss in damage. Celestial is going to take a considerably higher loss in damage compared to berserkers. This is because the ratio of stat:crit dmg is much lower on berserker/assassin/valkyrie then it is on celestial. Celestials critical damage had a crazy high ratio and now that ferocity is going to be added up like regular stats your effectively losing around half (guesstimated) of your added damage on critical hits. Now this wouldn’t be so bad for condition engineers except that you now have very low stats in all areas. You have weak healing, weak condition damage, weak physical damage, low toughness, and low vitality. You would be much better off just picking one or two areas and stacking stats in them.

Saying Celestial stats are not viable in PvE is a joke.

Adamantium.3682:

Saying Celestial stats are not viable in PvE is a joke.

If you think its a joke then I’ll compare them. (Please note that these calculations have critical damage converted to ferocity for the upcoming patch. Also the calculations were done with ascended gear, I’m not sure if the stat ratio is different for exotic.)

The total of stats on a celestial amulet is 378. The usable stats on a celestial amulet add up to 162. That means 57.15% of celestial stats are wasted. The total of stats on a berserker’s amulet is 296. The usable stats on a berserker’s amulet are 296. That means 100% of stats are used and no stats are wasted. Now at this point your going to try and make the argument that you use all the stats on celestial. This argument been proven wrong by thousands of people time and time again. Condition damage, healing power, toughness, and vitality are not viable in PvE. I even took the time to compare effective power which would accurately compare the damage differences assuming both celestial and full berserker builds are using perfect rotations. (More than likely someone in celestial isn’t using perfect rotations meaning the damage gap is even wider.)
Berserker build EP = 8869.91
Celestial build EP = 7605.85
Asassins build EP = 10229.09

(The above EPs are calculated with current critical damage and are going to chance when critical damage is converted into ferocity. More than likely a mix of berserkers and assassins armor will be better than full assassins armor.)

You’re assuming things we have no way to even know right now, including what the Celestial stat distribution is going to be and how much Ferocity is going to give you 1% critical damage. And your little jab “more than likely someone in celestial isn’t using perfect rotations so the gap is even wider”… why is someone using Berserker or Assassin’s gear going to be using ideal rotations? They’re magically better players somehow because of what gear they’re wearing?

Aside from that glaring issue, saying something is “not viable in PvE” is ridiculous in and of itself. Anything is viable in PvE. It’s PvE. If you want to be a min maxer, be my guest you paid for the game play it how you want. We’ve all seen enough of the “zomg Zerker so good everyone else noob” drivel by now. But saying that anything other than Berserker/Assassins is not even viable is, indeed, a joke.

Adamantium.3682:

You’re assuming things we have no way to even know right now, including what the Celestial stat distribution is going to be and how much Ferocity is going to give you 1% critical damage. And your little jab “more than likely someone in celestial isn’t using perfect rotations so the gap is even wider”… why is someone using Berserker or Assassin’s gear going to be using ideal rotations? They’re magically better players somehow because of what gear they’re wearing?

Aside from that glaring issue, saying something is “not viable in PvE” is ridiculous in and of itself. Anything is viable in PvE. It’s PvE. If you want to be a min maxer, be my guest you paid for the game play it how you want. We’ve all seen enough of the “zomg Zerker so good everyone else noob” drivel by now. But saying that anything other than Berserker/Assassins is not even viable is, indeed, a joke.

I didn’t assume anything. We know exactly how much ferocity we’re going to have and celestial stats won’t be changing at all. What we don’t know is how ferocity will convert into actual critical damage. I gave you usable stat points with critical damage replaced with ferocity. I thought it was fairly obvious why someone who is using berserker/assassins skill rotation is better. They care more about being useful to the party so they naturally try and find the most optimal way to be useful. Maybe viable was the wrong word. I should have said useful. But more importantly, saying “anything is viable in PvE” is just plain wrong. There’s a very large difference between finishing a dungeon and finishing a dungeon without purposely wasting time. Awhile back a video was posted of a party in full Magi gear taking ~50 minutes to complete CoF P1. The world record for CoF P1 is 5:27. See the difference?

Clumsy.6257:

Adamantium.3682:

Saying Celestial stats are not viable in PvE is a joke.

If you think its a joke then I’ll compare them. (Please note that these calculations have critical damage converted to ferocity for the upcoming patch. Also the calculations were done with ascended gear, I’m not sure if the stat ratio is different for exotic.)

The total of stats on a celestial amulet is 378. The usable stats on a celestial amulet add up to 162. That means 57.15% of celestial stats are wasted. The total of stats on a berserker’s amulet is 296. The usable stats on a berserker’s amulet are 296. That means 100% of stats are used and no stats are wasted. Now at this point your going to try and make the argument that you use all the stats on celestial. This argument been proven wrong by thousands of people time and time again. Condition damage, healing power, toughness, and vitality are not viable in PvE. I even took the time to compare effective power which would accurately compare the damage differences assuming both celestial and full berserker builds are using perfect rotations. (More than likely someone in celestial isn’t using perfect rotations meaning the damage gap is even wider.)
Berserker build EP = 8869.91
Celestial build EP = 7605.85
Asassins build EP = 10229.09

(The above EPs are calculated with current critical damage and are going to chance when critical damage is converted into ferocity. More than likely a mix of berserkers and assassins armor will be better than full assassins armor.)

This is all wrong. Condition damage doesn’t have a place? So that means in your eyes condi damage is always 0, which is totally in accurate.
Now If you look with correct rotations and effective condi application you can see that I am achieving bleeds of around 1000 per tick, burns of around 800, poison of 250, 100 torment. Which in total is 2150 damage every second. Added to you calculation I have now surpassed your berserker.

to quote the site you used

Effective Power
Effective power allows you to make a quick comparison for damage output for different equipment setups with the following caveat:
Direct damage only – all damage sources affected by the power attribute

That means condition damage isn’t included. So now we have celestial doing more damage.

As for the “you know how much ferocity is going to be”, you have determined it a nerf in your eyes

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I wanted to stop by and say thanks for the feedback. We do feel that the celestial stat set will be hit the hardest with the upcoming critical damage changes, so we are looking at possibly boosting the overall stats by a small amount.

Also the celestial stat set in PvP is using a much lower stat multipliers than the PvE versions so we will be looking at changing this as well. Nothing is set in stone, but I wanted to let guys know this is something we are discussing.

Throws that one out of the window. So we could see an even bigger divide in the overall damage of the celestial build I have linked.

Finally, the build doesn’t just work as a pure dps build, it can be effectively used as support with burst healing, you will take 15% less damage than a zerker build according to the same site with 20% more effective health.

All in all the build itself is fine. In future as well when we see more bosses similar to
the wurm with condi becoming more effective we will see a greater need for a more balanced build.

Thanks FreekPalmer. I didn’t want to have to go find that quote.

I stand corrected. I didn’t know that Anet had mentioned raising celestial stats. Also I don’t think you understand effective power. EP isn’t DPS. A difference of ~2k EP between 2 sets does not mean a difference of 2k DPS. EP is a direct damage comparison to determine what pieces of armor/consumables/sigils will make your DPS higher. Changing skill rotations and traits will render the calculations invalid. And I seriously hope your joking if you think 2150 damage per second is good. You may be adding 2150 condition damage per second but your losing nearly the exact same amount of physical damage by using a suboptimal skill rotation to improve your condition damage at the expense of your physical damage. At a minimum in a decent party you should be dealing somewhere around 8-10k/second with grenade or bomb kit. Why would you be using anything other than a pure DPS build in PvE? Healing, vitality, and toughness are rendered useless by blinds, reflects, and dodging. But just for a minute let’s say that toughness and vitality would make a difference in theoretical survivability. A full glass elementalist has more than enough survivability with the lowest armor and the lowest HP in the game. Why would you need so much HP and armor? As an engineer you have more blocks, longer range (although range is invalid in dungeons), higher base armor, and higher base HP.

I can’t believe I forgot to mention this before but you haven’t even considered that you won’t be able to stack max bleeds or burning in a dungeon. Other players will be overwriting your own conditions with their conditions. Most classes have minor traits that can easily stack up to 25 bleeds in a group. None of your conditions will last anywhere near their full durations and will deal considerably less damage than what they’re supposed to.

Clumsy.6257:

I can’t believe I forgot to mention this before but you haven’t even considered that you won’t be able to stack max bleeds or burning in a dungeon. Other players will be overwriting your own conditions with their conditions. Most classes have minor traits that can easily stack up to 25 bleeds in a group. None of your conditions will last anywhere near their full durations and will deal considerably less damage than what they’re supposed to.

i thought you said conditions have no place in PvE. So why would there be anyone stacking them?
also condis don’t get overwritten unless the player has more condition damage than you. So either they are full condi which means you will indeed lose some dps. But also they will be adding some making your dps slightly strong.

you unfortunately are stuck in the mindset of go zerk or go home. Which isn’t how 90% of gw2 play unfortunately. We have been seeing it more and more in pve a shift away from the stand and spam, with tactics being required hopefully whichever way arenanet decide to go.
we’ve seen a shift in paths being adjusted to stop people skipping half the game.
Celestial is a really good set of gear, it’s versatile enough to be useful in all situations. Also means you don’t need a few sets of gear loitering in your bags. It also makes good fractals gear as well as wvw. It’s also not just my build it works for, there’s some great ft and eg builds out there which use it. Which is what i believe the OP asked for.
some players may go down the zerker route. But it doesn’t make it the best.
i admit you wont be breaking any speed clearing records, but cof p1 in 10mins stopped being good months ago.
being able to do 100kdps is useless if you are down a lot of the time.
dead dps is 0 dps.

Clumsy.6257:

At a minimum in a decent party you should be dealing somewhere around 8-10k/second with grenade or bomb kit

What is the basis for this outrageous statement?

Adamantium.3682:

Clumsy.6257:

At a minimum in a decent party you should be dealing somewhere around 8-10k/second with grenade or bomb kit

What is the basis for this outrageous statement?

Outrageous statement? I’m low balling the damage here. If your really trying for max you should be getting higher. More importantly, 8-10k/s isn’t very high. Bomb kit’s skill #1 has an attack rate of .92 seconds. That bomb can easily hit for over 8k/s.

i thought you said conditions have no place in PvE. So why would there be anyone stacking them?

Many classes passively stack conditions as a side effect of having a high critical chance. Its very easy to have constant 25 stacks of bleeds without focusing on conditions.

also condis don’t get overwritten unless the player has more condition damage than you. So either they are full condi which means you will indeed lose some dps

Where did you get this information? When I last checked on this all stacking conditions would overwrite each other meaning you could have a 0 condi damage necro writing over a max condi damage necros bleeds.

you unfortunately are stuck in the mindset of go zerk or go home. Which isn’t how 90% of gw2 play unfortunately. We have been seeing it more and more in pve a shift away from the stand and spam, with tactics being required hopefully whichever way arenanet decide to go. we’ve seen a shift in paths being adjusted to stop people skipping half the game.

Are you even playing GW2? If anything the game is leaning heavily towards full meta gear or your getting kicked. If groups do decide to kill everything then the speed difference between meta build teams and your celestial build teams becomes insanely large. For instance, that 50 minute cof p1 run was full of random non-meta builds. The run with full meta builds took ~15% of the time.

Celestial is a really good set of gear, it’s versatile enough to be useful in all situations. Also means you don’t need a few sets of gear loitering in your bags. It also makes good fractals gear as well as wvw. It’s also not just my build it works for, there’s some great ft and eg builds out there which use it.

Full berserker/assassin gear is more than versatile enough to be used in every part of the game.

some players may go down the zerker route. But it doesn’t make it the best.
i admit you wont be breaking any speed clearing records, but cof p1 in 10mins stopped being good months ago.
being able to do 100kdps is useless if you are down a lot of the time.
dead dps is 0 dps.

This is the best part. Just because people use a build doesn’t make it good. A build that has the same survivability and superior damage to everything else is the best. And I love how you make the assumption that people running glass builds will die/get downed. I run a full dungeon tour every day with 5 people in full glass builds. We wipe maybe once or twice on the entire tour. I guarantee you would wipe more using non-meta builds.

Clumsy.6257:

Adamantium.3682:

Clumsy.6257:

At a minimum in a decent party you should be dealing somewhere around 8-10k/second with grenade or bomb kit

What is the basis for this outrageous statement?

Outrageous statement? I’m low balling the damage here. If your really trying for max you should be getting higher. More importantly, 8-10k/s isn’t very high. Bomb kit’s skill #1 has an attack rate of .92 seconds. That bomb can easily hit for over 8k/s.

You still haven’t shown me that this statement is not outrageous. Bomb Kit PEAKS at 8-9k in the most ideal of situations, it’s well documented on these forums. I don’t get how you translate this to a “minimum of 8-10k dps”.

Also, I’m pretty sure highest condition damage always takes priority. The wiki says there is no information about what happens when stacks drop due to extras, but a cursory evaluation in any PvE environment shows that if I have no condition damage I will rarely see my bleed damage getting through.

Adamantium.3682:

Clumsy.6257:

Adamantium.3682:

Clumsy.6257:

At a minimum in a decent party you should be dealing somewhere around 8-10k/second with grenade or bomb kit

What is the basis for this outrageous statement?

Outrageous statement? I’m low balling the damage here. If your really trying for max you should be getting higher. More importantly, 8-10k/s isn’t very high. Bomb kit’s skill #1 has an attack rate of .92 seconds. That bomb can easily hit for over 8k/s.

You still haven’t shown me that this statement is not outrageous. Bomb Kit PEAKS at 8-9k in the most ideal of situations, it’s well documented on these forums. I don’t get how you translate this to a “minimum of 8-10k dps”.

Also, I’m pretty sure highest condition damage always takes priority. The wiki says there is no information about what happens when stacks drop due to extras, but a cursory evaluation in any PvE environment shows that if I have no condition damage I will rarely see my bleed damage getting through.

Starting dungeon tours right now, I’ll calculate bomb damage either late tonight or tomorrow.

well bomb autos are kind of the last resort when everything else is on cd: bob, pry bar, throw wrench, jump shot, blunderbuss all do like 125-200% of a bomb auto… so you could be busting out like 6k bomb autos and still make like 7.5k dps. and then surprise shot can put you over 8k. or grenade barrage and grenade 2+4 if you take grenades as a 3rd utility. and the condis you kitten out add a few 100s too.

and 6k bomb autos arent anything special…

yay numbers