Guild Wars 2

So let me get this straight, off the bat: engineers are not a flawless class.

However, I’m always of the mindset of how I can make things better personally.

So here’s what I think, my 2 copper if you will. While reading this, keep in mind that I know engi’s aren’t perfect. But neither am I!

1) Stop comparing to whatever other MMO you played.

This game does not have the balance, and may not ever get the balance, of whatever other MMO you played. It’s barely a month old. All MMO’s see balancing across the board over years of polish. It doesn’t have the professions other MMO’s has, and it does not have the debuffs they had. It does not have the stats.

I focused on a burst DPS engineer and found that did not really work. Maybe a healy type engineer was better, but all classes can heal and now I lost so much damage I became unusable. The long and short of it is that you have to play in a way that fits in this game, and not ot make the game fit the model of a different video game.

2) Combo’s: learn them!

Check out this article!

Combo’s are amazing. It’s like you get free spells! Regenerating Mists is an AoE regen. Magnetic Shield is a defensive move that can reflect projectiles or knock enemies back. But used in rapid succession it is an AoE regen, knocks back enemies and an AoE heal!

If you have a kit equipped, use it! Switch to the flamethrower to drop a wall of fire and switch back to your rifle. Now, your spells and your ally spells will react with that and set stuff on fire. You don’t even have to do anything, they fire spells through your wall of fire and it lights enemies on fire. You just increased the damage of everyone by dropping one spell.

Switch to grenades and throw a poison grenade. Switch back to whatever you wanted to do before and now all spells that interact with tha combo field will apply weakness or poison. BOOM! More free debuffs and damage.

3) And yeah, like I said: use those kits!

Switching to a kit to use 1 or 2 spells and then removing it is not a waste. It’s how we are meant to play. A bad Elementalist will stay in one attunement for a whole dungeon. A good one switches from fire to earth spells, to air and then back to fire. A good engineer does the same.

Grenades kit and press 4 and 5, then switch back to your pistol/shield and double tap 4 to get AoE Frost Armor and Weakness. Switch to flamethrower and hit 4 to drop a wall of fire. Switch back to your pistols or rifle and press the incendiary ammo button and start lighting stuff up twice as fast!

4) Experiment!

You cannot compete with a flamethrower if you have 0 points in explosives and firearms. Don’t equip it and traipse around because that other engineer did it. What stats did you focus on? What traits did you focus on? Not the same as he did? Well, than you can’t play the same way!

5) Synergize your stats!

Do not try to be a jack of all trades. Going for traits that compliment power and toughness and going for vitality and boon duration in traits is not a good plan. 30% chance to cause bleeding on critical hits is good to have though ifg you are stacking precision. Again, don’t be a jack of all trades, because then you are a master of none. Even a full turrret build can be useful, if you pick all the synergetic skills and if you use the gear to support it.

In closing, I need to say again that the profession is not perfect. Neither am I. And neither are you. So while Anet is working on bug fixes and smoothign things out (Which will take them forever. An MMO is never done tweaking.) I plan on making myself a better player.

Good work. A lot of people don’t know how easy most of this can be done.

Some good info here. Thanks for furthering the Engineering cause!

Edit: The more I read about Engineer, the more I realize the brilliance of its design. There is SO much to this game’s combat system that I’ve never seen before.

Here’s a video by Hassth explaining how combos work:

Nice video link there Spitwyld.1963!

Hoenstly, I got my bum handed to me too often by monsters so yesterday I didn’t play. I just read. And then I played. And stuff that whooped me before now had troubles touching me!

But also; get out of that mindset of wanting to be #1 on imaginary damage meters. Applying a 10% damage boost to your party and 10% more damage taken on a monster is a MASSIVE buff to your party of Allies. Even if you do the least damage, you still did the most.

I’m thinking that if someone wants to do top DPS, Engineer might not be the right class for them. There are many abilities that help the team.

Clearly you are not perfect…

Where would you get frost armour from?

As much as i’d like to sugercoat the engineer for pvp, i just can’t.
For the WvW pvp side of things its hard for me to love the engineer because of all the class bugs (auto attack issues and kits not benefitting from weapons mostly) and as you’ve mentioned, class balance.
Although for group pve it’s an entirely different game. I find that i’m usually the last one left standing unless all the ranged mobs/boss decide they only want me dead, which happens way to often.
Utilising combo fields from the flamethrower to boost damage, the elixir gun to remove conditions that my fumigate can’t and chain immobilising melee mobs/bosses makes the engineer a real credit to team, among other things.
A great guide overall for making combos more clear to people. Wish i’d see more people setting up combos and using vitality/toughness than building glass cannons and getting wrecked.
To sum it all up, i love my engi in pve, but hate engi in pvp.

I think more people would embrace weapon/kit-swapping once they fix the kit autoattack issue though. Having to retoggle autoattack whenever we swap back is very much a bother.

Majority of Engineer players don’t blame Engineer for poor performance or poor design issue. We just want bugless (or less-bugged) character to play with. A-net should know that Engineer’s bug list is longer than the combined bug list of all the other classes.

I’m planning to get good armor when I get to level 80, and I won’t be able to afford more than one set. I want to maximize damage in general solo PvE, but I play support and control in dungeons.

How would you go about the armor in this case?
I like to change builds all the time too (I get bored otherwise), so sometimes I need precision and condition damage, sometimes I need power…

I keep buying armor and weapons that are a LOT better than the zone I’m playing in, but I still barely do any damage, so I’m really worried about that

Gear scale down dependant on zone, so even if you were gearing lv 80 legendaries in a 1-15 zone, it’s not going to make you into a godmode killing machine. On an offnote, if you’re exclusively using kits, you also don’t need to wear any weapons, since weapons have no effect whatsoever when using kits (except for a potential bug regarding buffs granted by sigils).

I like it.

But I disagree with Psaakryn on the weapons thing. Like the OP said, you shouldn’t be staying in any one kit for an infinite amount of time.

Your normal weapons (rifle or pistols/shield) can increase their own damage (especially adding condition damage to the pistol’s poison/bleed/burn attacks), while in higher levels you can get sigils that stack condition, power, or precision with each foe killed.

A good tip to get the most out of stacking sigils if you are an extreme kit user: Swap back to your normal weapons and finish them off that way. Doing this will add a stack, and if you stay up you can easily have 25 stacks of 5/7/+10 of whatever you like to have.

I said IF. There are reasons not to swap kits currently, mainly cause they still haven’t dealt with the auto-attack issue. And I did mention those buff stacking sigils, which may or may not be a bug.

i have no problem with engineers damage or how they play; in fact, i love it.

the only problem i have is with bugs or certain design decisions i don’t agree with (such as with sigil of energy/strength not working with kit swap, 2s bleed on pistol AA, kits not benefiting from sigils, etc.), but other then that? i love da engineer.

well, the random nature of elixirs is rather annoying too…

Pistols . . .yeah, I think the #1 could use at least a 1 second increase in bleed duration.

And there are plenty of bugs that need to be fixing.

As to the random nature of elixirs, I’ve already posted on that twice.

@lorazcyk.8927

Yeah, there’s your problem though. You want to maximize the DPS of your class but you don’t keep in mind that your class isn’t pure DPS. No class is. But ask yourself this:

Do you like to drop the turrets and manage them?
Do you like running around with the flamethrower?
Do you like bombing things?
Do you prefer Rifle or Pistol?

Because increasing your damage isn’t always done through just getting more power.

@Lyuben.2613

I was referring tho this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frosty_Armor

@Creature:
I use kits for their utility, not as weapons. That is, if I need a poison field, switch to grenade, lay the field, switch back out, if I need a blind, go to flamethrower, use blind, switch back to weapon.

I actually have barely used the Explosives line at all, I use mostly Firearms with all the “on crit” effects. I try to make up for having no Explosives points by adding power runes (condition and critical is affected by power!)

I like all the engineer weapons and use them depending on the situation.

I never said I play pure DPS, I got control and support, but when playing solo I need to kill stuff, so guess what, I need to be strong enough to kill stuff.

Did you not read the part where I said “I want to maximize solo pve damage” … because when I’m solo, I need to kill stuff, ya know?

So what should I do in this case? Because I’m having trouble killing things even with pretty good gear (exotics or rares, however my accessories are just karma stuff)

I’m almost level 80.

Yeah, that’s honestly my personal biggest problem with the class. In group settings, I LOVE playing support/heals. It’s pretty much what I’ve done in every other MMO I’ve played. But when I’m out doing solo PvE stuff, I have a hard time killing things in a timely matter.

Right now I’m level 52, mostly run Pistol/Shield, Flamethrower, Elixir Gun, and Throw Mine. This setup works great for me, assuming I have plenty of maneuvering room. It takes longer than almost every other class to kill something, but I do have pretty high survivability.

The problem arises when I’m either A.) in a cave, dungeon, or any other small area, or B.) there are lots of enemies around, with little space between them. With so many Engineer skills focused on jumping away and pushing back enemies, when I try to fight in a small area I just get swarmed and killed. I really think that we need at least a little more damage output, purely for solo PvE purposes. It’s a little sad to be fighting an enemy for twenty seconds, have it maybe down to half health, and then someone else comes up and attacks it a couple times to finish it off.

@lorazcyk.8927

I am, by no means, an expert. Yet :p

Power affects criticals yes, but only because a critical is a multiplier of damage done. So to increase the damage of a critical power is not your best option.

There’s math involved and there is some levels where power is better, but if you can do that math I do not need to explain it to you

The problem is, I do not know all the values (I.e.: How much damage does 1 power add and how much crit chance is added by adding 1 precision)

With those values missing I can’t say if crit chance or power is more DPS increase.

The same thing goes for how much power and condition damage/duration you want, and how they are weighed against each other.

Personally, I am building towards this build: http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#McMzM9MzoowaMoowaMaxGa0VcVbVkV

I’m only a level 40 so far, so take my advice for what you want. But I take on monsters of level 45 and level 40 veterans solo and I win. I’m not the fastest killer out there, that’s for sure. But I also do not usually die, and to me that is what matters: did they die and I survive?

Good tips. Yesterday I was checking all my skills and trying different builds, there are tons of different combinations with the Engineer. I still couldn’t figure out what suits me best tho.

Lyuben.2613:

Clearly you are not perfect…

Where would you get frost armour from?

Mortar + jumpshot!!!!

Step 1 build a mortar on a keep wall!
Step 2 drop the ice field
Step 3 Jumpshot into the ice field
Step 4 profit?

It’s almost as good as timing supply drop with a water combo field from healing turret! If your timing is good you can then detonate healing turret for a double heal! with a new turret for regen! It’s pro-tastic!

But my favorite is Rocket boots – utility goggles – jumpshot – overcharged shot – rocket kick! It’s like line dancing but better!

I find a lot of fun ability sequences! It’s my specialty. That and charging into a zerg on a super glasscannon rifle engi!

Engi’s lead the way!

I thought Engineers were prettykittenOP in the right hands. Jump on Twitch.TV and you’ll be able to watch AC Erho, and Teldo play their engineers; you’ll change your mind if you think engineers are unbalanced or weak. Teldo for example takes on 4 v 1s as a walk in the park and wins almost all the time. He solos the lord in a few minutes if not seconds.

I believe once you play around with kits and skills, and get good at switching and figure out how you want to play, and how you’re going to do it. You will dominate in PVP and PvE.

PVE for engineers is too simple. PVP for engineers has a higher skill-cap, and it’s very noticeable from each engineer you see in a match.

So i believe engineers are perfectly balanced. It really comes down to your skill and effort put into your characters. Too often I’ve seen some engineers who can hold a point better than a Guardian, an engineer who conquers every match, and Engineers who burst with the best of them. Engineers are balanced. You need to utilize your skills and utilities and toolkits to the best of your ability, and learn the game. Learn about positioning, where you want to be in a fight. Timing on dodges and CC’s. The little things will improve your game quite a bit.

That’s why this game is great: Skill based!

I’m only a level 40 so far, so take my advice for what you want. But I take on monsters of level 45 and level 40 veterans solo and I win.

I had no problem up to Lv 55, and I always played in areas well above my level with no problem, solo or with one other person (funny enough, generally mesmer friends).
Then after playing areas like Bloodtide Coast (a 45-55 zone!!!), and I could barely do anything. Again, yes, solo. A player of a different profession would show up (ranger, thief, mesmer, warrior), and they’d kill the enemy with barely any effort. If engineer or guardian showed up, it would take us a really long time to kill the enemy.

Now I’m almost 80 and I’m really worried. I try to focus on damage attributes (glass cannon, I feel I have no choice, but it’s not a problem anyway because I can survive). I try to kill something, even just one enemy. I fight it for a really long time, and the bar barely goes down. Another profession shows up, and kills it it in a split second. It makes me want to smash the laptop on the wall >_>

I’m not complaining, I’m just asking for help from others who have been in this situation with the engineer and overcame it.

I really like the engineer play-style, I want to push through this annoying problem so I can start enjoying myself again.

In all seriousness engineers are better at dealing certain kinds of damage, and the kits / weapons tend to be very specialized.

There are certain play styles that don’t work well on engi.

ST melee, and ST ranged are examples.

The bulk of our melee options are AoE so they take a dps loss for being AoE so they will not do as much damage or apply as many or as long of conditions as a ST ability.

The same is true of the ranged options. The bulk of them are AoE, and since they are both AoE and ranged they get reduced damage, and reduced condition durations. (with the exception of grenade kit!)

So a ST melee ability with no conditions is going to do much better on ST damage than one that is AoE.

That’s why even with solid power your not criting above ~3k to often with bomb while others might do so.

It’s the same with pistol #1. It’s ranged with an AoE component so to compensate the condition duration and damage is low, when compared to other 1 abilities.

The niches I think engi are best at for dps are

Melee AoE power “rifle, ft, bomb, grenade, ~tool”

Melee AoE condition damage “ft, rifle, pistol, bomb, ~tool, ~elixir gun, grenade”

Ranged ST condition “pistol, elixir gun”

Ranged AOE condition “pistol, grenade”

You’ll notice we have more condition damage specs than power specs but we tend to have more condition damage abilities than power ones.

That and I just can’t make tool kit / elixir gun work as primary weapons in power builds, but that might be my own failings.

The thing with those youtube videos is that they show niche spec’s and play styles. They will work in one specific area but when you go someplace else or fight a different enemy team comp your fudged.

Teldo has said so himself.

If you don’t mind being very specialized there are more than a few builds. But if you want something that works well around the shop, aside from power / grenades picking are pretty slim.

This is true for most professions though. Only a few spec’s shine in multiple facets, and those are pretty much considered OP at the moment.

My main disappointment is the alchemy/explosives traits not complementing the elixir gun much.

Why is the ground-based healing skill on the elixir gun not considered either an elixir or a heal even though it heals directly, also heals overtime and says in the tooltip that your shooting an elixir? I should get that skill to deal damage from explosives (tossed, aka ground-based targeted, elixirs deal dmg to enemies), apply 1 stack of might from alchemy (1 might for self/allies affected by elixirs) and another 3 stacks of might from explosives (3 might stacks when you use healing skill).

The same is true for the elixir gun shot that cripples the target while giving nearby allies swiftness…. the gun and tooltip say it’s shooting an elixir, so allies should get the +1 might on top of the swiftness if they’re nearby.

I can live with it since I still pump out good dps and support, but I hate when descriptions are misleading.