Guild Wars 2

Since they nerfed necro into oblivion this patch, I have considered taking my engi back up again and was looking for any tips and tricks you guys might offer. I’m not totally new to engi, but never played it much in pvp, mostly sticking to pve for now I imagine. My old builds were condition based (ran mostly bombs/mines and elixer gun because I freaking love elixer gun- idc how many people hate it lol). Any other engis out there run condition specs primarily? And if so what traits do you focus on most? Also, I found that while open world pve (obviously) is cake, dungeons are a bit tougher, at least on bosses. Trash rarely poses a problem I can melt through them easy enough, but I kind of lose my focus on the bosses. What exactly is the role of the engi? With defiant you can’t really knock them around much and it’s all too easy to cap out conditions on that single target.

In dungeons I almost exclusively run a Grenade build (30/10/0/20/10 for instance). My preference is to focus on power rather than on condition damage, but the beautiful thing about a Grendadier spec is that by default you already get +30% condition duration, which synergizes very well with stacking vulnerability with grenade explosions as well as spreading the chilled condition with skill #4 for control. My role in dunegons is typically high sustained single-target AND AE dps while stacking vulnerability to improve my teams dps. Obviously you can also focus on water combos if needed, and in high level fractals the Elixir U toolbelt is very handy for avoiding ranged damage. Some people do HGH, though I find it too annoying to have to both constantly activate grenade auto attack AND also have to spam elixirs constantly for the might stack, but that’s personal preference. It is a powerful build if you can stomach the finger activity thats required. I typically don’t focus on a pure condition damage grenade build in dungeons because it’s too easy to conflict with someone else running a condition build.

Soul

Yeah I was trying to stay away from nades, I find them a little boring, but I think in a dungeon it’s going to be my best bet. I always coordinate condition roles with teammates anyway, so overlapping won’t be an issue. I always try to make all my builds as close to a “dual spec” as I can in case such a thing happens so I can swap on the fly. I wasn’t aware of the condition duration spec, I’ll definitely check that out thnx.

You could always try out an FT/EG spec. It’s very “dual spec” as you put it. I play mostly WvW now, but this guy has had an up to date FT/EG guide running for a long time. I have used some of his older builds for PvE with good success in the past.
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/72009-a-comprehensive-look-at-the-flamethrower-and-elixir-gun/

Thanks Sagramor, I’ll check it out.

necro was not nerfed to the ground

This is a build I’ve been playing around with for awhile since I was kinda tired of everything being based around grenades, flamethrower, and elixir gun.

A Tool Kit & Gadgets build with a focus on vitality and high self-healing.

http://tinyurl.com/lhljjey

It’s worked… well admittedly it’s been having mixed results for me. While it can 1v1 extremely well, it starts losing a lot of steam in large groups. Do note I only really PvE so I have no idea how it might perform in PvP.

Another big problem it has is that the only solid condition removal available is through Med Kit’s #4 which isn’t enough to keep up sometimes. It’s been really solid in most PvE stuff though.

Hi Nay! Fellow [support] necromancer refugee here; we ran together on one of Bas’ early all-necro runs. I’ve basically switched to engineer as my main and am enjoying it a lot. Here’s what I’ve figured out so far, although admittedly I know necros far better than engineers:

Healing turret is your best heal – if you double tap it you can get it to cast the group heal + water field at the same time as you drop the turret (rather than 3 seconds after). Then use the 1st toolbelt skill to detonate the turret for a water blast finisher. At this point I usually use shield 4 or elixir gun 4 as a second blast finisher. Load up a blast finisher or two in here and you can heal a party well even in zerker gear.

For damage in dungeons, grenades or bombs seem to be the best option. Grenades do more damage and have much more range, but can be a pain to play. Unfortunately, grenades don’t do good damage unless you have the grandmaster grenadier trait, which is a 50% damage boost. Bombs don’t do quite as much damage, mostly because they lack the conditions and only hit once (meaning they don’t proc vulnerability/bleeds as frequently), but also offer some support options via a fire field, a smoke field which also acts like well of darkness, and a blast finisher (just be careful to only use it when a boss has defiant so that you don’t knock back all the nearby enemies).

Elixir R’s toolbelt skills is the awesome AoE res skill. Elixir U’s toolbelt skill is a projectile blocking wall – either the guardian’s wall of reflection or thief’s smoke screen. It has a long cooldown, but coming from a class with no projectile reflect, is amazing.

Shield 5 is a 2 second long block, but the tooltip text is a bit confusing and doesn’t seem to indicate that. Toolkit 4 is a 3 second block on a 20 second timer, which is great for skipping.

You can group stealth using bomb kit 4’s smoke field with lots of blast finishers. I usually go: Big Ol’ Bomb (bomb kit’s toolbelt) → Bomb Kit 4 → detonate healing turret → detonate thumper turret → thumper turret’s toolbelt skill → double tap shield 4 → rocket boots. This combination gives between 11 and 13 seconds of stealth if you get through it quickly enough, which can make a huge difference for the couple dungeon runs that are short but really hard (TA, Arah p3, probably the end of CM).

Pistol 3 acts similarly to necro dagger 4 as far as blind goes, which is useful.

Elixir gun acts as a weak AoE heal (about the same as well of blood’s AoE portion without healing power), a condition removal (on the aoe heal), a short cooldown (15 second) blast finisher, and a stun break (on the toolbelt skill). You can cancel the jump backwards on the blast finisher (skill 4) by swapping weapons immediately after activating it, giving you the blast finisher but less knockback. If you’re in danger of knocking yourself off a cliff though (such as in SE p1), it’s safer to just avoid elixir gun 4 altogether.

Tool kit 5 is a pull, sort of like spectral grasp but a lot slower.

Supply crate is pretty much the best non-racial elite. Personally, I use Avatar of Melandru (human elite) on Lupicus for the stability.

Benji.9203:

necro was not nerfed to the ground

In dungeons, yes, they were. It’s not really fair to comment on this if you haven’t played a necro in high-end PvE, in my opinion.

I like my turrets… However I’m looking into making an alchemy/Elixir gun/Flame thrower build myself more because I like all those condis, also wanting to try a Gadget build…. But I feel they’re just not “good”(I can’t get one to work I’m probably doing it wrong).

PS: how was necro nerfed into the ground?

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Any other engis out there run condition specs primarily? And if so what traits do you focus on most? Also, I found that while open world pve (obviously) is cake, dungeons are a bit tougher, at least on bosses. Trash rarely poses a problem I can melt through them easy enough, but I kind of lose my focus on the bosses. What exactly is the role of the engi? With defiant you can’t really knock them around much and it’s all too easy to cap out conditions on that single target.

GW2’s conditions are designed for small scale PvP, not PvE (or WvW battles).

Having played an Eng condition build extensively this year I can confirm that they’re not suited to PvE (or to major WvW events either). I’ve tried. I really want it to work. But the sacrifice in terms of time (slower kills) and rewards has been high.

With the new contribution based boss rewards coming along I’ve finally accepted that condition builds just aren’t worth it in PvE (no point missing out on rewards just because the condition cap nerfs your contribution). So it’s time to spend a whole lot more gold/badges/karma use a whoel bunch more gold an karma back to the bank for the gold to do yet another complete regear

FYI, I’m been running a full condition build with EG, FT and (in PvE) Bombs (+100% cond duration, over 1300 cond damage). It’s fine for general PvE roaming, but so is any halfway decent build. For big events it’s poor, ditto for dungeon runs if there’s another condition build in the party; all because condition caps kill its effective damage when there are other people around.

My recommendation is build for direct damage and treat conditions as an extra bonus on top of your direct damage (like everyone else does).

Why would you build for Conditions with FT/EG? Especially since you went through the trouble of explaining how conditions are inferior to direct damage. It’s been discussed to death how that setup favors direct damage and not conditions.

Well, what i’ve ended up with so far looks like this:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/engineer/?2.2|a.1o.h5.e.1m.hd|0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.719.1g.719.1g.719.1g.719.1g.719.1g.719|1c.62.1d.9a.1d.9a.1d.9a.1d.9a.1c.62|u378.0.k17.k2a.0|2m.d|2b.2e.2v.7.30|e
My reason for doing it the way I did was to allow me to still dual spec like I did on my necro. With this setup I can do hybrid dps as well as swap for support on the fly (as well as swap out bombs for grenades and appropriate traits for nades). I love the eliver gun because it has the combo field as well as a blast finisher. The reason I chose to do elixers was because I have virtually no other condition removal (I know I could just use elixer C, but unless I’m doing wvw I doubt it will help me much in pve). So far I’m just melting things like it’s nothing and even tanked a few champs on occasion. Most fun I’ve had in a while lol. Let me know what you guys think and offer constructive criticism if you see something I overlooked.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Since they nerfed necro into oblivion this patch, I have considered taking my engi back up again and was looking for any tips and tricks you guys might offer. I’m not totally new to engi, but never played it much in pvp, mostly sticking to pve for now I imagine. My old builds were condition based (ran mostly bombs/mines and elixer gun because I freaking love elixer gun- idc how many people hate it lol). Any other engis out there run condition specs primarily? And if so what traits do you focus on most? Also, I found that while open world pve (obviously) is cake, dungeons are a bit tougher, at least on bosses. Trash rarely poses a problem I can melt through them easy enough, but I kind of lose my focus on the bosses. What exactly is the role of the engi? With defiant you can’t really knock them around much and it’s all too easy to cap out conditions on that single target.

Necros barely received any significant nerfs. You can’t throw yourself off of cliffs now. Suck it up.

If insignificant nerfs make you rage, you certainly don’t want to roll an engi. When we get nerfed, we really feel it.

timidobserver.7925:

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Since they nerfed necro into oblivion this patch, I have considered taking my engi back up again and was looking for any tips and tricks you guys might offer. I’m not totally new to engi, but never played it much in pvp, mostly sticking to pve for now I imagine. My old builds were condition based (ran mostly bombs/mines and elixer gun because I freaking love elixer gun- idc how many people hate it lol). Any other engis out there run condition specs primarily? And if so what traits do you focus on most? Also, I found that while open world pve (obviously) is cake, dungeons are a bit tougher, at least on bosses. Trash rarely poses a problem I can melt through them easy enough, but I kind of lose my focus on the bosses. What exactly is the role of the engi? With defiant you can’t really knock them around much and it’s all too easy to cap out conditions on that single target.

Necros barely received any significant nerfs. You can’t throw yourself off of cliffs now. Suck it up.

If insignificant nerfs make you rage, you certainly don’t want to roll an engi. When we get nerfed, we really feel it.

Unless you’ve played high end content in both pve and pvp, you won’t know what I’m talking about on the necro. The nerf to DS has made the whole point of using a necro pointless now. You can’t negate those big hits anymore. But honestly that’s not my sole purpose of this thread and i’ve said my piece on it in the necro forums. I’m here trying to learn how to play engi. And while I see most saying engi is at the bottom of the barrel, it sure seems to work brilliantly for me and I’m having a blast. Which, unless I missed something, is the whole point of playing a game.

Might want to use a current calculator like qw2skills or intothemists.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Well, what i’ve ended up with so far looks like this:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/engineer/?2.2|a.1o.h5.e.1m.hd|0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.719.1g.719.1g.719.1g.719.1g.719.1g.719|1c.62.1d.9a.1d.9a.1d.9a.1d.9a.1c.62|u378.0.k17.k2a.0|2m.d|2b.2e.2v.7.30|e
My reason for doing it the way I did was to allow me to still dual spec like I did on my necro. With this setup I can do hybrid dps as well as swap for support on the fly (as well as swap out bombs for grenades and appropriate traits for nades). I love the eliver gun because it has the combo field as well as a blast finisher. The reason I chose to do elixers was because I have virtually no other condition removal (I know I could just use elixer C, but unless I’m doing wvw I doubt it will help me much in pve). So far I’m just melting things like it’s nothing and even tanked a few champs on occasion. Most fun I’ve had in a while lol. Let me know what you guys think and offer constructive criticism if you see something I overlooked.

As far as traits/utilities go:
While cleansing formula 409 is awesome if you run a lot of elixirs, elixir gun and healing turret also both remove conditions inherently (2 and 1 every 20 seconds, respectively); it’s not a ton but it’s good enough for most PvE, and elixir C can make up the gap otherwise. If your only elixir is elixir H, healing turret is a far better skill for healing and condition removal, in my opinion.

If you have 30 in explosives, it’s probably not worth swapping out of grenadier almost ever. Reduced cooldown is not very useful for bombs, since your bomb damage is all from auto-attack, and a 20% cooldown on the aoe blind is nice but not huge (and it’s already on a shorter cooldown than well of darkness untraited). Reduced cooldown does help grenades, but grenadier helps more. Feel free to swap this up of course, I’m just not sure the time investment of swapping it for most ranged fights will be worth the slightly faster cooldown.

I’m not a huge fan of your gear, but I’m guessing you have a method to your choices there which I’m unaware of.

timidobserver.7925:

Necros barely received any significant nerfs. You can’t throw yourself off of cliffs now. Suck it up.

If insignificant nerfs make you rage, you certainly don’t want to roll an engi. When we get nerfed, we really feel it.

I have a ton of empathy for engi nerfs, but just because you don’t understand the significance of the death shroud PvE nerf doesn’t mean it’s insignificant. It’s a huge nerf to high end necro play in PvE.

Sagramor.7395:

Might want to use a current calculator like qw2skills or intothemists.

aren’t those pvp only though?

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Sagramor.7395:

Might want to use a current calculator like qw2skills or intothemists.

aren’t those pvp only though?

One or both have PvE calculators now, although I still prefer the out of date gw2buildcraft because the interface is a lot faster (and it shows more stats).

Thanks Del, I’ll take that into account. It’s still going to be tweaking here and there so I’ll try those things you mentioned. As for the gear, I’m leaning towards straight dps with the conditions as icing on it, hence me not running too much condition damage and opting for duration instead. I may not stick with zerker in the end, haven’t decided yet. As for my trinkets, those will inevitably be updated once i get ascended stuff anyway but I will try to go along those similar lines with healing power in them, or possibly just get 2 different sets, one for dps, one for support like I did the necro.

I went the two sets on my necro as well. You’re correct in that condition duration > condition damage as far as I’ve heard. Zerker armor is always good for dps (especially with the range on grenades). If you’re interested in mixed stats I think the celestial armor/trinkets tend to give better mixed stats than manually mixing gear, but both are quite time-gated unfortunately.

gw2buildcraft happens to have none of the recent trait changes. And intothemists and gw2skills both have PvP and PvE/WvW modes now.

Welcome to the ranks of Engineer! I believe you’ll find that the engineer class is a blast to play! We have so many different viable builds there is something for everyone!

I am currently running a “heal bomb” build with all cleric gear as I mainly WvW…and I like the “tankiness” it offers. I’m going to be trying a FT/EG build ala https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Flamethrower-Elixir-Gun-Rifle-WVW-PVE-build for a different style for a bit.

Thanks for the welcome! And yeah I’m already having a blast

Your necro tears ought to be saved and converted into a new elixir or something.

Same thing as op here. Having a bit trouble to level up engi though. (pistol/pistol even when same lvl as your lvl), seems to take ages to kill stuff. Only when you hit burning and the confusion is doubled via chain, it does decent damage.

Grenades seem nice, but hurts your fingers after a while XD

I’m curious though, fellow engineers, wich is your favorite, auto attack? Pistol one seems a bit underpowered, rifle one feels also low damage (at lvl 22), grenade is ok, but not really an ‘auto-attack in the true sence’, you must spam it, EB gun auto seems good, but still not on par with necro scepter (hardly needed though with it’s support role). For instance happens often we are out of supply in wvw and get the command ‘facerub!’. And i’m wondering, what does an engi do then?

flame jet.

despite being low end on the dps scale, people still react with fear to fire. it is so hard coded within our fight-or-flight instincts as human beings that, largely, people still run from it.

fire bad! FIRE BAD!

@DelOnasi and Nay of the Ether

Didn’t realize and for that I apologize.

@Nakoda

Elixir N
Consume Elixir N RNG Effect 1: Gain the ability to spectral jump a distance of 900. The player becomes invulnerable for 1 sec after activation and is then allowed 5 secs to teleport back to the original location of consumption.

Consume Elixir N RNG Effect 2: After consuming the elixir the player is then given the apperance of a demonic like creature. Enemies within 360 range of the location of consumption are feared for 5 secs. The player assumes the form of the necromancers iconic Lich Form for 10 seconds (Power and condition damage are not amplified and only auto attack is able to be utilized).

Toss Elixir N RNG effect 1: Create a spectral wall at the target location for 5 seconds.

Toss Elixir N RNG effect 2: Create a darkness field where enemy boons are converted into conditions. Lasts a duration of 5 seconds with a 1 second pulse converting 2 boons every second.

@Phoebe Ascension

Favorite auto attack would have to be elixir gun auto in terms of usefulness. Tool kit auto with an asura in terms of laughs.

i <3 that is is elixir “n”

n(‘-’n)

timidobserver.7925:

Necros barely received any significant nerfs. You can’t throw yourself off of cliffs now. Suck it up.

If insignificant nerfs make you rage, you certainly don’t want to roll an engi. When we get nerfed, we really feel it.

I have a ton of empathy for engi nerfs, but just because you don’t understand the significance of the death shroud PvE nerf doesn’t mean it’s insignificant. It’s a huge nerf to high end necro play in PvE.[/quote]

Sure I understand the significance. I just don’t agree with you : ).

I play my Necro, Guardian, and Engi Primarily. Engi is spvp only. Guardian is WvW and Spvp. Necro is Spvp, PVE, and WvW.

I didn’t know there was a “high-end PvE”.

Oh, you mean high level fractals. Cool.