Here’s a nice big wall of text. Scroll down for the TL;DR.
Hey guys. So as a few of you might know, I’m relatively new to the WvW scene. I mostly only did PvP. I never enjoyed hotjoin (8v8) because I considered it to be too zergy for me, so I shrugged off WvW for a long time with the idea that it was all zergs. However, about 3 weeks ago, I decided to give it a try anyway, just to get a change of pace. I realized roaming was actually a thing you could do, and had a ton of fun killing people with my lvl 20 engi. So, with the help of cof p1, I power crafted him to 80 & got him some gear. It’s been a fun couple of weeks, & I’ve learned a lot.
When I first started, my build consisted of speedy kits, nades, & full glass carrion. Soloing camps was a breeze, I won almost every 1v1, but would have some difficulty dealing with larger numbers. I decided to throw some more survivability into the build, and to add in HGH to make up for it. I miss speedy kits, but am pretty happy with what I came up with.
The Build
Traits
10/10/20/30/0
Explosives: V – Incendiary Powder
-A big chunk of my damage comes from this. It pairs up beautifully with blowtorch at the start of a fight, throwing on a nice 14 seconds of burn.
Firearms: VI – Hair Trigger
-Because this build lacks nades/bombs/FT, my main source if damage is the P/P combo. The 20% faster recharge is invaluable and allows me to re-apply conditions quicker than most classes.
Inventions: VI – Cloaking Device – VII – Power Shoes
-I have to admit, I was never a fan of this tree line when I did PvP. The traits didn’t seem all that useful to me, but I forced myself to take it so I could have some extra toughness. The more I played WvW, though, the more I fell in love. The Cloaking Device is excellent for getting away from zergs, stopping spikes, and sneaking up on someone mid-fight. I chose Power Shoes because I found myself running away from zergs very often. I really like this trait, engineer’s don’t have many gap closers and this really does help you get around the field during fights.
Alchemy: II – Fast-Acting Elixirs – X – Cleaning Formula 409 – XI – HGH
The bread & butter of the build, your basic HGH alchemy lineup. Not much to explain here, when you run HGH, you don’t get a lot of wiggle room in this tree unless you want to greatly sacrifice your potential.
Gear
Armor
I run full carrion, except for the leggings, which are rampager. Having rampager legs gives you an extra 4% crit chance, which helps to get off your incendiary powder.
Runes
2x Major Rune of Water
2x Superior Rune of Water
2x Superior Rune of Fire
Weapons
Pistol #1: Carrion with Superior Sigil of Battle
Pistol #2: Rabid with Superior Sigil of Corruption
Trinkets
Full rabid trinkets, rampager’s amulet.
Buffs
Koi Cakes or Rare Veggie Pizzas for 40% condition duration.
Quality tuning crystals (or the step above if you really want to waste money)
Utilities
Elixir H – Chosen for use with HGH. Protection is great.
Elixir B – Again, chosen for use with HGH, and is your main source of swiftness.
Elixir S – I personally save this almost exclusively to stomp, but it occasionally lets you get out of some sticky situations. Will completely mitigate someone’s spike if you time it correctly.
Toolkit – I love this utility. It gives you access to some great skills, which are:
2: Box of Nails – Comparable to thieve’s caltrops, but on a 10s recharge. Great for kiting.
3: Pry Bar – Not only does the initial hit do some big damage, but if you run this build, you will find a large chunk of your damage comes from confusion. If paired with the pistol’s Static Shot, you can throw on 7 stacks of confusion, which at times does over 1,500 damage per skill use.
4: Gear Shield – Excellent skill for WvW. 3 second block lets you run through zergs, mitigate spikes, and keep people at bay.
5: Magnet – My personal favorite, especially in WvW. It’s a great skill to open up fights with, but I use it all the time to catch fleeing foes. Can’t count the number of times I’ve killed people just feet away from their keep door thanks to this.
Supply Crate – An extremely powerful elite, it has the potential to completely turn fights around. Not only does it drop turrets to immobilize & burn your foes, it also comes with medpacks that you can pick up for a few extra thousand health. Best of all, the initial drop comes with a 2 second stun, which makes it excellent for spiking.
Well, I think that’s about it. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know.
(edited by Shanks R Us.2489)