Guild Wars 2

Since condi engy is becoming pretty much the new fotm (didn’t have a single tourna without one in enemy team yday). I’ve dueled quite a few of them with various professions and I can beat them 50/50 with some professions, but it is always an extremely difficult fight due to the constant condi/cc pressure and good sustain. I must admit, engy is something I’m the least familiar with and it’s most likely a l2 kitten ue for me. Kinda similar to how people didn’t know how to deal with trap rangers.

I would like some useful tips from longterm engy players. For example: what personally makes you feel shut down or what are the hardest situations to fight against? When do you feel the most vulnerable (except after the stunbreak obviously)?

I’m an ex-warrior player and I’m used to going against strong builds as an underdog, so I usually try to learn as much about them as possible. Currently I’m playing around with shattermesmer and trapranger (might try BM) as roamers and the rare time I bunker with guardian. Engy seems to be a pretty good natural bunkerbuster so any tips on how to last longer against you guys with a guard is appreciated also. What are the musthave attacks to avoid?

Hope you feel like sharing your “secrets” and help me learn a bit.

Yap here are some tips.
First off, rangers are pretty decent vs engies. They are fairly evenly matched. mesmers can struggle unless u get the drop on them. Necros who have corrupt boon are actually quite good against engies as they spam boons on themselves with the might stacking and fury.

1. Try to bait out there elixir s cooldown. (mini me form).
2. Either stand far away from them (800 + range-assuming you have something good to hit them with. Or get right up to them if your about to burst. here is why. At super close range( like standing on top of them) blowtorch will miss. It also has a 600 range so being far away and it cant hit you also. Also grens spread out at range and do less damage. BEing close makes you more vunerable to grenades though. IF he has pistol out though u can go right into him and stay on top of him as much as possible.
The mid range fight is the butter zone for the HGH engy.

The super most important thing to dodge is pistol #3 static shot, its the purple lighting looking shot. Its puts confusion and blindness both on the engies opponent.

Hgh engies don’t have great burst (though high steady damage) and they are not fast. IF the fight isn’t going your way early, disengage and get out , a lot of times an engy wont be able to keep up. Don’t run away in a straight line where they can gren you easy.

IN team fights, they are super vunerable to burst. If you catch em with elixir S on cd they are in trouble especially if you can immobilize them.

Pressure them, with the possible exception of necro an engy should be the first target in a TF.

HGH players who are good are very tough to beat, but any mistake and they lose, so pressuring them is the way to go. In a 1vs1 vs hgh, if they do everything right they win, even if u do as well. IF they make any mistake they probably lose, even if you make a mistake as well. so pressure , pressure, pressure.

It can depend on the condi-engi. Most will pick up Nades, Elixir B, and Elixir S. We aren’t necessarily uniform though, even between HGH Condi Engi’s there is discussion between Geomancy and Battle for Sigils. That can change how you fight one a lot. If they have Geomancy they are going to want to engage you in near melee range so they can tag you with the Geomancy procs, otherwise it might make less of a difference to them if they have Battle. If they have Geomancy they can burst you down in a very short amount of time contrary to what you may think of conditions, but if they have Battle they can draw the battle out and beat you in the opposite method.

Key things to dodge are the Static Shot and Blowtorch. Their primary method of dealing damage is through the Burning. If you can cleanse that off then you should be be better off at mitigating damage. If their Geomancy cooldown is down or they lack Geomancy engage them in melee and constantly try to throw off their Pistol accuracy and Grenade accuracy by moving erratically.

Above all though, Condi-Engineers are actually pretty weak to pressure. They have Elixir S, a 50% chance of Stealth, moderate Swiftness uptime, and just a pair of Dodge rolls. They might have moderate Toughness and moderate amounts of Health though depending on the Amulet setup. Again though, they can be pressured down very easily and they only really have Swiftness to try and disengage with. Deal with Elixir S and then focus them. They are amazing duelists, so unless you know you can beat them via practiced dodges you need to make sure they are in team fights and being focused.

Conditions are their weakness, Since you’re a guardian, who usually build power, you should stand no chance against them in a fair fight. Just watching condition Engineers trying to cure themselves of conditions is quite a sad sight.

HGH Engis usually have 409, so condition removal isn’t exactly a weakpoint. It’s vulnerable to condition overload certainly, but a Guardian can’t overload someone with conditions even if their Condi builds were viable.

I always have big trouble fighting hammer guardians! The only thing I can withstand them is elixer S (mini me!) and that only lasts 3 seconds. We only got one option of stability as an engineer: throw elixer S, which only is a 50% chance.. Satbility is definitely an engineer weakspot.

And avoid getting hit by blowtorch (the small flamethrower). It’s our main damage output.

Ayestes.1273:

HGH Engis usually have 409, so condition removal isn’t exactly a weakpoint. It’s vulnerable to condition overload certainly, but a Guardian can’t overload someone with conditions even if their Condi builds were viable.

(1v1 situation again)
Misconception.
409 is the reason why it’s a weak point. When an engineer toss an elixir on the ground his eyes are now off the target and his surrounding, along with a casting animation he could be using to put pressure. “Engineers have no passive way to remove conditions.” is completely true now. Some call this working too hard for a little effect.

Similar to the reason why Elementalist are weak against conditions. When Elementalist are in water attunement, they give up pressure completely for a instant. Elementalist have a passive way to remove conditions, but that’s because they are a light armor class with low hp.

Guardians can’t build for conditions but they can build for heavy condition removal and internal healing Engineers can only dream of. Never played a guardian. But I’ve fought good ones, who stood their ground.

Ferum Flamebender.5910:

I always have big trouble fighting hammer guardians! The only thing I can withstand them is elixer S (mini me!) and that only lasts 3 seconds. We only got one option of stability as an engineer: throw elixer S, which only is a 50% chance.. Satbility is definitely an engineer weakspot.

And avoid getting hit by blowtorch (the small flamethrower). It’s our main damage output.

Ah! How could I forget about cc. Engineers is the second most vulnerable class to cc. (The first being the thief) This is because of their lack of condition removal on their main hand weapon. (Which is also why I think rifle is far superior to pistol for a condition build, but that’s another argument altogether)

Engineer’s attacks are a really odd hybrid of range and melee. For example, the tournament build can throw grenades from 1500 range, but it takes several seconds for the grenades to travel that distance so they’re more effective at closer ranges.

So the best advice I can give you for fighting engineers is simply to not waste dodges when you could just walk away from the red circles. Engineers will save their most powerful grenades for when they get up close, so make sure you still have your dodges/blocks/invulns/evades when that happens. I’m not sure the exact numbers, but at 1500 range you should have about 3 seconds to move before the grenades land. At mid-range, maybe 600-900, you would have about 2 seconds. At point blank range, you still have about a second since the cast time on grenade skills seems to be just under 1 second each. But at point blank range, you’ll really need to dodge.

Engineers don’t have any gap closers (except for one pull in a build that doesn’t exist any more) so if you’re on your ranger/mesmer, just kite them. If you’re trying to hold a point with your guardian, that’s going to be harder. The engineer will go down very quickly if you call over a single teammate, but don’t expect to win the 1v1 in a traditional bunker build.

Other weaknesses: sustain is actually quite bad for HGH engineers. They have an RNG chance for regen, and other than that it’s just their 6 heal. CC is also becoming rare in engineer builds. Most will use p/p, nades, and elixirs, which doesn’t have any cc outside of a 1-second immobilize and a chill. Rifle variants have a lot more cc but are squishier and don’t put out as many conditions.

Lite.3819:

Ayestes.1273:

HGH Engis usually have 409, so condition removal isn’t exactly a weakpoint. It’s vulnerable to condition overload certainly, but a Guardian can’t overload someone with conditions even if their Condi builds were viable.

(1v1 situation again)
Misconception.
409 is the reason why it’s a weak point. When an engineer toss an elixir on the ground his eyes are now off the target and his surrounding, along with a casting animation he could be using to put pressure. “Engineers have no passive way to remove conditions.” is completely true now. Some call this working too hard for a little effect.

Similar to the reason why Elementalist are weak against conditions. When Elementalist are in water attunement, they give up pressure completely for a instant. Elementalist have a passive way to remove conditions, but that’s because they are a light armor class with low hp.

Guardians can’t build for conditions but they can build for heavy condition removal and internal healing Engineers can only dream of. Never played a guardian. But I’ve fought good ones, who stood their ground.

I would disagree that tossing an elixir on yourself means you have to take your eyes off the target. I’m not the most talented of players out there and even I can used the fixed position that I am in the camera and land a toss onto myself without dropping the centering of my eyes on a target. There would be more of the argument here if you were talking about the cast time associated with the single condi removal being a fair bit of effort, but I disagree with that as well. Low amounts of condi removal are seriously underrated, because that’s all you need in most cases. Which really all you need to do is knockout the high bleed stack. There are exceptions, such as against the Engineer themselves, but for our purposes the 409 condi removal is actually one of the stronger options out there in the entire game. Not to mention the tosses aren’t the only sources, it’s automatic in the heal, invuln, 75% hp, and elixir B activation. It’s everywhere, and even without trying to actively remove the condis you can mess up a bleed stack.

Regarding an Ele’s condi removal, I would most certainly agree that it’s weak unless they are traited into Regen Condi-Removal Cantrips. Your right that very few people understand how Ele’s work in regard to Water being a time they output no pressure, and is generally the only time have any chunk healing.

Honestly if we are looking at a build for a Guardian to have the best success against an HGH Engi (which I think changing your build isn’t necessarily the right approach to trying to beat something), then it’d likely be some offensive control based variant with things like Smite Conditions as utilities. I’d still advocate what essentially boils down to learning how the HGH Condi Engi does and dealing with the tools you have. Guardian Condi Removal can help slow us down, but it isn’t going to stop us any longer then 40 seconds or so even in the most Bunker based builds.

I’d say good answers in 1st post already:
1) take long distance. Long range is worst for hgh condi overload. Don’t think you’ll evade blowtorch in close and that’s all: bleed and control from gren spam will do its job. No close.
That’s why i believe proper rangers are mine worst enemy in hgh condi. Best i can do is los, kill pet and hope he gives me time to recover.

2) corrupt boons are very nice. hgh condi is only viable with its 15+ mights, if they don’t have them you can overpressure them in ‘1’ vs ‘1’ spam any day.

3) There can be a variant where ppl take unlim vigor + speed (2 minor traits). This one can evade you forever. Yes he loses a bit in damage but…

If they have a rifle, don’t get close. Between net shot, blunderbuss, overcharged shot, and jump shot (read: EVERY FRIGGIN’ SKILL), a smart engineer can completely annihilate you. I’ll avoid a pistol versus rifle debate, as much as I’d like to start one, but rifle users are much more volatile up close – overcharged shot induces two seconds of opportunity for him and his teammates to utterly wreck you, and it hurts even more if the first thing you see are three blue-white grenades arcing through the air at your knocked-out kitten. After that, you’ll be chilled for 7.5 seconds, and he’s going to keep throwing every grenade in the world on top of you while you struggle with it, and then likely kill you.

It also hurts that there’s no tell for overcharged – aside from ‘the engineer is close, oh god what do I do’. Blunderbuss has a 0.5 second cast time with a slight animation, overcharged is about 0.2 seconds that just fires off. And on top of all this, he has a 2-2.5 second root on an 8/10 second cooldown. It’s fortunately easy to avoid at longer ranges, but you should still keep an eye out – it has a blatant animation, and decent travel time, but up close, it’ll just cement your doom if you don’t have some way to stun or block.

my advice for fighting an engie:

run, simba! run away and never return!

Engineers are certainly not weak to conditions. Especially with 409 and 3 elixirs loaded up. I can promise you though that every engineer in tpvp is going to be carrying the Supply Crate elite though. Bring stunbreaks, or brace yourself for the grenades that follow.

Careful about using Immobilize on engineers as well. They have a trait with virtually 0 internal cooldown to make them invisible when immobilized.

Really good stuff guys, I really appreciate it.

Opinion, one of the best things to remember when fighting an Engineer.

-Immobilize is a condition and will still effect players with Stability

Hi,
I play the engineer basically since the release and very important thing to know, in my opinion, is that engineer does not have any reliable way to get stability. Now, he can have stability but it is either from a teammate or from random chance (Elixir C/toss Elixir C – 1 in 9 chance, toss Elixir S – 1 in 2 chance, transmute – 8% chance to converting conditions into boons AND 1 in 9 chance for stability). Since most of the engineers will have only 1 stun breaker (Elixir S or if the engineer is bunker Elixir R – thou I did not saw any engi bunker in some time) repeatable CC is way to go – hammer warriors are extremely annoying!
Also, in my personal experience, the engineer is weak against conditions that are applied repeatedly, i.e. it is better to have a way to apply several conditions (2-3 different conditions) multiple times rather than applying/stack one condition for long duration. Necromancer’s wells, Mesmer’s Chaos Storm or Ranger’s traps are good examples.
When fighting engineer, do not use burst – clever engineer can soak it up very well. Deal continuous damage rather that throwing everything on him at once (Rapid Fire or Unload for example). Watch for CCs and if possible use ranged weapons. 99.9% of all Engineers in sPvP will have Supply Drop (most OP elite skill in the game IMHO) – unless you are certain you can kill engineer VERY quickly (and I mean like in 2 or 3 seconds) never go after him when he is between his turrets! With this elite I can easily chew anyone even in 1vs2 fight.
From the builds you mentioned, and for the situation vs Engineer, I would suggest trap ranger. Shatter mesmer is cool but it relies too much on burst to kill enemy. But be smart about placing your traps; I remember one time I went vs trap ranger. That poor guy started laying traps in front of me – knowing where the traps are, I knocked him back (Overload) jumped over the traps (Jump Shot) and killed that guy in few seconds while laughing like a maniac :-)

So far from my experience, while keeping your tips in mind, I’ve had the most success winning against an engy with a ranger. Both type of viable tournabuilds (traps and BM) seem to work pretty well.

Shattermesmer is capable of bringing him down quickly also, but it relies heavily on engy making a mistake. I have to bait out the stunbreak, so I can lock him down and doubleshatter him, although he is easier to focus in a teamfight, he can be really slippery sometimes.

1v1 situations seem to be easier while I play a ranger, since ranger can deal a lot of sustained ranged damage and will punish players who get too close. Good pressure through traps or pet. I don’t think any build can currently win 1v1 against a BM ranger on equal player skilllevel, though I see condiengy as one of the best candidates.

I love engy balance atm though. You guys are really strong and godlike in midfight carry, but I don’t consider you guys OP (although engy+ele on a point is just something insane to bite through). Thanks again for all the tips and advice.