I have been playing in a ton of tournaments and hotjoin matches lately and am curious about your opinions on the performance of the engineer. It seems pretty hit or miss for me depending upon what classes/specs I encounter and have tried several different builds (bunker, rifle/nades dps, bunker/dps and pistol/elixir).
I guess I will start with the bunker first. It is a very tricky animal as you are completely dependent on your knockbacks, blinds and snares. Your dmg is pretty awefull and if you end up without any dodges/stun breakers you go down fairly quickly or at least you do imo. Thiefs still do an incredible amount of damage to you and guardians of all varieties can be a nightmare.
I think rifle/nades was my least favorite build (I tried several combinations of gear/runes) as I was always far too squishy. Maybe someone has had some success with this combination?
And now to my favorite – pistols/elixir. Most of the time I really enjoy this build as I can deliver some impressive condition damage while having a lot of buffs available to me as well as plenty of condition removal options. The big issue with this spec is a a lack of any hard cc outside of supply crate. 1v1 I have been doing fairly well against thieves (I was surprised by this), but if I am in a skirmish and a thief jumps in I am pretty much dead in a second or two. I didn’t really struggle with any of the other classes aside from the guardian. With Leap of Faith, Flashing Blade and JI they have the tools to stay right on top of you. They also delivery some surprising amount of burst and can tank what seems to be quite a lot of damage. For me they are the ultimate uphill battle.
I really hate for classes to be nerfed unless it is absolutely necessary and it feels as though the engineer has a long way to go to perform as well as some of the top classes (guardians/mesmers/etc.)
This is actually a bit longer than I intended, but if anyone feels like replying with spec and what matchups they struggle with or any helpful tips that would be great.
