Guild Wars 2

I called my first engineer Hella Firestarter because I wanted to play a flamethrower engineer.

And I thought this is a question thread from a frustrated guardian main who is facing some issues with her levelling engineer… You know guardians, the class where you run all zerker gear, grab every DPS traits available, and you are still tankier than most other classes (at least I am on my 80 guardian).

Engineers have some issues but we are not that bad. The game is very different for a low level Engi compared to a level 80 Engi. I did some quick tests when I levelled my second engineer just recently… and my conclusion is that you should try the bomb kit for levelling and see if you still feel the same way.
At level 20:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQBUioqndEL72IivCyF-jUxA5xioxW3KiGrWnIqWzg5VKiWtUAQsGA-w

Fighting is simple, grab a couple of mobs, blind and AoE. EG is your ultimate utility kit, it does a lot of stuff. You will also have a couple of fields and blast finishers to try some combos.

You can switch out the grenade kit if you want, that’s just my personal preference. My preferred heal skill is actually the medkit, but I found it fairly crappy at low levels. From lvl 20-40 I would work on alchemy traits towards backpack regenerator. After that go to the tools traits and get speedy kit.

Hopefully trying that out might give some little insight as to what an Engi is capable of.

P.S. Flamethrower looks cool and all, but it really isn’t for everyone.

I run Lyssa with Elixir X. The result is pretty hilarious because nobody ever see it coming. I won’t claim it’s the best use of rune/elite skill slots though. =D

I can say one thing engi definitely gets outperformed in WvWvW roaming/small group raiding. Most of the professions are outperformed in the same area of the game so by no means I am implying engi has it the worst.

If you’re looking at WvWvW roaming/small group raiding, it’s a style of asymmetrical warfare that emphasizes on hit & run. You need to be able to burst down targets and run from large groups. Only a couple of professions are truly capable of this and engi is one of the professions that can’t. The game in this area is so imbalanced that this is strictly who can and who cannot. There isn’t anything in between.

Again, it doesn’t mean engi has it the worst, but I definitely would roll one of the professions that can do it better if WvWvW roaming is what I want to do. (Ok, I already did…) I’m sure I don’t have to say it out loud what the best profs are because they’re mostly all you see in WvWvW roaming…

I’m sure everybody has heroic stories to tell about how you can beat these “best” professions, I know I do. However try that again when you’re fighting a group of 5 of these “best professions” that work together and abuse the system imbalance to the max.

Edit: Oh, and this is strictly WvWvW. PvP and WvWvW are completely different gameplay.

You can probably kill a glass cannon or an average thief (knockdown/AoE/burst), but you won’t kill a smart and well-played thief by yourself. I hate to say it, but it’s working as intended by design due to stealth + high mobility + teleportations.

I just want to point out that a number of “popular” engi builds are only available after level 60 grandmaster traits. A couple of examples of these are the “flamethrower juggernaut”, grenadiers, bomb healing, and elixirs HGH builds.

For leveling purposes, a few of the more easily accessible useful traits are actually in tools.

Interesting, when I read about WvW melee train, I thought that was about 10+ hammer dudes focusing on CC while the rest of their zerg butcher your CC’d/scattered zerg. 100 blades never even crossed my mind.

Before we go into discussing about the “queues”, I think we should focus on the main problem people are trying to say. Let me see if I can get this right…

Some people believe that the number of actual players in the map are different than the number that the server believes are on. The difference is claimed to be the result of incorrectly counting players that have left the map already. Here’s an example based off arbitrary numbers: the server might think there are 100 TC players in the map, but in reality there are only 50 TC players.

This would be a pretty bad issue if that were true.

On the other hand if somehow the map were to allow only 30-40 people per server, then you will see the queue too but the game would still be “balanced”.

Here are the most likely causes imho.

TCBL: Crafters and people using the trading posts. People standing around in spawn and waiting for who-knows-what. Duelists in a cross server fight-club.

EB: Mainly JPers and standing around in spawn and waiting for who-knows-what.

styx.7294:

TCer C sounds pretty awesome, I’m not gonna lie. What sound do dolyaks make? I could be making it on Teamspeak to my guildies while doin this.

Hahaha I wish somebody could tell me that as well.

TC is nice. Just don’t get mad in the following situations and everything will be awesome.

Scenario A:
Some Icon: “Everybody gathers on me!”
TCer A: “Quickly, everybody ELSE go gather on icon while I solo/duo this camp.”
TCer B: “I’m supply running to repair that thing. F off.”
TCer C continues RP walk with dolyak as a dolyak.
TCer D&E play tag in keep while in princess doll form.

Scenario B:
Some Icon: “EVERYBODY ON ME NOW!”
2 min later.
Some Icon: “WTF why is there no defender in that tower far far away from my icon!”

Shaojack.3871:

Unless you mess with their dolyaks, then they can be a lil nasty.

You SoR folks has no right to say anything about that. Your thieves+eles+mesmers havoc squads are way too pro at what they do. Our defenders die way more than we kill you guys. ;-)

Anyways, yes more people please join TC. Take my spot, I’m taking a break and won’t be logging on much. Maybe I’ll check back after the culling fix.

-
Tarnished Coast
Hella Firestarter / Curious Lily / Frillip / Kai Alfson

That is one of the problems by the culling issue. This is supposedly going to be fixed in the future.

If you have the thief on target, I believe the best way to hurt them is to use channeled attack because the channeling continues even after he stealth.

If you do not have him on target, what you do is you AoE the area where you think the thief is. Most thief are squishy by comparison to other professions. If you hurt them, they’ll likely go away (or die).

If there are friendly NPCs nearby, run to them if you can. NPCs are not affected by culling and you can tell where the thief is by following the NPC actions.

On TC /m chat is for your everyday talks. /t is where people bark out commands. It’s unavoidable but it’s pretty acceptable in our map to ignore the commands as long as you’re doing something useful. A lot of the camp cap, monsters cap, scouting, and defense repair/setup are done by individuals doing their own thing.

TIESTO.9058:

Elthurien.8356:

Who is the Guardian on TC or SBI running the Sword/Focus? I want that build! It looks like so much fun

If she was from TC and uses a candy cane hammer/sword and focus.. Thatd be me!

Now I’m curious… Hey Rose, what build are you running on that guardian? Is it a 0/0/30/30/10 meditation build?

- Frillip / Hella/ Lily

Kerithlan.1659:

Nuzt.7894:

Repair costs & cheaper siege for the outmanned is a good idea, I would add maybe a 10% passisve out of combat speed boost to allowing the smaller population to be able to get around the map faster while dealing with several forces hitting numerous targets at once.

Cheaper siege is terrible.

If buying: log in during off hours -> buy everything at a discount -> give to your guild to use during primetime

If building: log in during off hours -> drop a bunch of golems -> build them at a discount -> hide 70 golems in your spawn while you wait for people to wake up

Fairly certain there would be a easy way to go around these issues.

Cheaper siege: Can only be placed while buff is on, etc. IMHO cheaper siege won’t make any difference, so whatever.

Cheaper to build: Just exclude golems if that’s a concern. Cheaper to build other stuff such rams, catas, ballistas, and trebs will go a long way helping low-pop in grabbing points and being involved.

You certainly don’t want to give superman buffs out because it’ll only bring out the gankers who have no interest in helping the server to take/defend towers and keeps.

You must be on our (TC) off-hours. Unfortunately our off-hours are weak as **** for tier 2. You will be outnumbered most of the time and the first thing you learn in WvWvW is that numbers win 90% of the time. The way we handle ourselves between our prime-time (NA night time) and our off hours are utterly different. My personal experience is that our off hour crew are so used to being overran in tier 2 that they melt away at the sight of enemies. 5v5? Nope, actually 5v2 because 3 of the TC guys are already running away.

Does TC suck? No, there is a reason why a PvE RP dominant server got up to tier 2. We actually do have people that will fight and know how to go about it. We fought tooth and nail against a lot of very good servers to climb up into this tier. See http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#na for reference.

I have only 1 suggestion that might make your stay in WvWvW a bit better. You need to join one of our bigger guilds like PiNK, TSL, or whoever you see during the hours you play. You need people that will show you the ropes because you won’t pick anything up if you just solo and hang around the PuGs we have during the off hours. We will likely be concentrated in only 1 map so you need to be on that map where we actually have any sort of organization going.

Oh and that 1v1v1 thing? It doesn’t really work because the scoring system encourages you to grab the easiest points (off the weakest low-population side) before your opponent does. 1v1v1 only happens when all 3 sides are fairly equal in fighting strength.

OP, let’s go over the very basics of the popular 0/10/0/30/30 d/d ele build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhImkbzx4gjDAkHnYCLiCPUeMTO2A

First of all it is important to pay attention to what element attunement they’re in, most importantly pay attention to the water attunement. When they switch to it they AoE heal, AoE remove conditions, and apply regeneration buffs. This attunement and their mobility skills form the basis of their survivability. This is why in PvP the time to burst them down is immediately after they switch from water attunement.

Dodge ride-the-lightning and its subsequent updraft knockdown. Although this sequence is so commonly dodged now there may be a high chance they ride-the-lightning just to waste one of your dodge and save the updraft for later.

One of the 2 main ways to do damage is set you on fire and then do fire grab. The other (the main damage source) is churning earth. Honestly I don’t know a reliable way to dodge this because I’m waiting on my lightning flash to (dodge your counter and) follow you while I’m channeling it.

All 3 cantrip utility skills break stuns and are great escape skills. Also they are traited to give regeneration, vigor, and remove a condition. They all make killing a tanky d/d ele difficult.

The d/d elementalists are still squishy if they’re unable to dodge/move away. If you can take away their mobility, they’ll be in trouble. On the other hand you will not be able to escape from a d/d ele. They can freeze and cripple you, then dash in and dodge out waiting for a chance for a meaningful spike. So just keep fighting because turning your back to a d/d ele is almost as bad as turning you back to a thief.

This week is really fun! Thanks to both SoR and BG players for putting up some really good fight. I am starting to learn more about my d/d ele, and it has been an awesome opportunity to train in the harshest of elements. You guys sure don’t pull any punches against up-levelers! If you saw a silly up-leveled sylvari TC ele in cultural tier 1 armor rushing into impossible battles and subsequently handing out badges, that was probably me. Although half the time I was trying to ride the lightning away from battle but had somebody targeted and went the wrong way. =)

Still only level 63, maybe I can get to 80 in the middle of next week. Hopefully I can do better in the coming week then.

Re: Rifle.

No, you don’t want to face tank trash mobs… you’ll die, LOL. The idea is dash in, burst with your rifle skills, get back out to medium range. Rinse and repeat.

Edit: (If vs 1 target, should always net-shot first.) Rifle 3 takes a bit of time before it shoots, so I normally press it while running towards my target(s) and it ends up firing when I get into melee range. Then immediately I do rifle 5 so I launch and land at the same place. (I use that quick AoE option thing so AoEs immediately lands at my mouse cursor.) Then I dodge roll out right after I land.

Dunnar.8420:

Sigil of Battle is 3 stacks of might (20 second duration) on weapon swap with a 10 second cooldown.
Sigil of Strength is a 30% on crit to gain 1 stack of might (10 second duration) with a 2 second cooldown.
Which one do you like for a might-stacking, Juggernaut build (assuming Sigil of Force is already on the other weapon)?

I was trying out a major sigil of strength (yeah I’m poor) on the FT… I think it’s decent for PvE in longer fights, but I think I would prefer the sigil of battle over it in WvWvW or PvP.

Random thoughts to OP.

There are some stuff very unique to the Engineer that you should try out. Quite a few of them are similar to Elementalists so it should be easy for you to figure out.

• Static Discharge (tier 1 trait) + Toolbelt skills
• Kit Refinement (tier 1 trait) + kits
• Combo fields and finishers
• Switching to Med-kit and triggering on-heal rune effects

Some stuff that ought to be clarified (IMHO):

• Some toolbelt skills are awesome. There are many instances where you would choose a utility skill simply because you want the toolbelt skill.
• Rifle damage comes in bursts at melee range (jump shot needs to hit twice).
• Grenades for leveling… sucks because it takes a grandmaster trait before it shines
• Ah the flamethrower… since I’m trying flamethrower/HGH now, let me write a bit about it.

Some people are trying to use the flame thrower as their primary DPS option. I have personally given up on it but I am using it to stack 7 x might (grandmaster trait) and then I switch to other stuff to burst. The knockback, blind, (and fireblast if you trait kit refinement) are very nice too. It’s a really good deal for a single utility slot, it just doesn’t do a lot of damage in a real combat situation (including misses). However it’s really fun to flame through walls.

I have just finished leveling my thief and my guardian to level 80. The thief easily deals a lot more damage on demand and can get away from a battle most of the time. The guardian can definitely out support any engineer if he wants, and also deal more damage with more survivability against a group of NPCs.

One thing I find going for the engineer though is that I haven’t found myself hard-countered 1v1 yet. Anything thief build I tried on my thief, there is always some build out there that you might as well stealth away and go kill somebody else, because there is simply nothing you can do against it. My guardian has a crap ton of problems against good players kiting me even with 2 teleports. When I play these two classes I occasionally get the feeling of “Nope no chance, time to fight somebody else.” The engineer always seem to give me this sense of (possibly false) hope that I can beat that dude if I could only pull this and that off at the right time.

I think the Guardian is the worst profession to use these on heal effects because they don’t have any short CD heal.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_healing_skills

The last time TC faced BG was such a long time ago and BG went to T1 and then went back to T2 since. So I would expect both servers to look and fight very differently than the last time we met.

The time TC faced SOR was during the Halloween event and that was totally awful. I think the worst part for me was that the TC 2-3 men havoc squads were completely and utterly shutdown because SoR defended everything in a super organized manner at reset. At least 3-4 SoRs on every camp (fully upgraded) and 3-4 escorts per dolyak in the weekend were way more than what TC players were used to. TC did not have decent defense back then and a similar sized zerg vs zerg would see TC being destroyed more often than not.

I can go on lamenting our shortcomings on TC back then for at least another 2 paragraphs, but a lot has changed and I’m excited about going against SoR players again to see where we stand now. I’m a bit annoyed that it’s during the Winterdays event because every server would be affected somewhat and you can’t really judge the strength difference correctly.

I think TC has attracted a lot more W3 oriented players during our stay in tier 3 so hopefully we do better this time around. Also there are the breakout events so at least we shouldn’t get all those whine posts about being spawn camped… LOL.

Strange, I have always thought the popular PvP builds (bunker and static discharge) didn’t involve grenades. IMHO grenades were great in WvW but they contribute practically nothing in a duel against any good opponent. Before you yell at me BSing, I ran grenades/rifle since launch and I WvWvW in most of my playing time.

The super elixir was a known bug and you should’ve known a fix would be coming. Any other new bugs sucks but hopefully they’ll fix that.

I have no idea about anything PvE related, so I won’t bother pretending I know anything about that.

To the OP, there were and are a lot of good (PvP) engineers that do not use the grenade build.

So I saw this thing, and I crafted a set to try it out on my engi. I figured I’ll share some info based on what I found.

The bonuses are:
(1) + 25 Healing
(2) Gives 3 stack of might to nearby allies when using a heal skill (10 sec CD).
(3) + 50 Healing
(4) + 15 % Boon Duration
(5) + 90 Healing
(6) Give fury to nearby allies when using a heal skill (10 sec CD).

The buffs apply to yourself as well but I do not know what the range is. With 30 in alch you actually get 45%boon duration and the buff time is around 13 sec might and 6+ sec fury. However if I were to use med-kit, I have to wait until the 3 stacks of might is gone before I can get the buff again. So the internal CD is more like 13 sec from when you press the healing skill.

When I am traited HGH and drink both elixir H + elixir B, I end up with 8 stacks of might and 20+ sec fury (plus the other elixir buffs).

It’s kind of neat. It won’t give the most personal dps or the most amount of might stacks possible. However I do like the idea of giving out fury and 3 stacks of might to my allies by just following my regular HGH might stacking rotation.

I wish there was a video since I couldn’t make that EST time. =(

Things pretty much happened as (I) expected, and the RP response was absolutely ridiculous and hilarious at the same time (to me).

Well call me old and cynical. I’m calling it here that the parade dolyak is going to die and a massive brawl will happen.

Yes, I have lost faith in the humanity of online FPS and PvP gamers a long time ago. Go ahead… prove me wrong. =)

Here’s mine with the spectral wave modulator that is too big for her. I didn’t choose a good background to make it stand out more but I’m too lazy. =P

Sunspots.9861:

What’s the point of an alliance where you still get last place lol

Some gamers (not necessarily video gamers) enjoy the power of king-making.

J/k…

- A bitter boardgamer

A little OT but… here’s how you burn supply from what I know (not sure if changed). Let say you have 10 supply, and this place allows you to carry up to 15. You want 15 but you can’t pick more up while you have 10. So make a ram and build it using just 2 supply. Now you have 8 and you can pick up supply again. So you go pick up 7 more and get 15.

Edit: 2nd way is that you will lose this place. You don’t want them to get the free supply after the flip. So you just use it up with whatever cheap means available.

TCer here.

I had a lot of fun running around with the BLNT guys last night on my leveling guardian. Thanks for putting up with my ineptitude! Haha. You guys are cool.

As for CD and FA splitting the TC BL map last night… Well YB and TC were doing the same to FA BL for the last couple of weeks quite often (I’ll omit the reasons here). This time it’s TC’s turn to get ganged up on in our BL for other reasons. I won’t speak for others but I’m personally cool with it and it’s just the way the game works imho. I would like to see the people who were publicly begging our opponents to team up on our home BL (since last week) to step it up now that we get what you wanted… at least while their cooperation lasts.

Looking forward to more fun fights for the rest of the week.

Heh, I just got my thief to lvl 80 and I couldn’t make up my mind either. So I ended up running strange bleed-spec D/D and P/D and put the shortbow in my backpack to switch into when it’s useful. I find it easy to reset a fight as a thief, so I have no problem switching weapons.

For D/D caltrop + death blossom stacks up AoE bleed really fast. When I see a zerg in WvWvW, I’ll run or steal into the middle of the zerg, caltrop + death blossom (x2), spider venom + dagger storm (fyi I run leeching venom + signet of malice). Also I find that it’s so much easier to get credit (and loot bags) in a fight with D/D because heartseeker is so good at finishing somebody with low health.

P/D I find is much better for certain 1v1 fights. I can save my initiative for escapes and/or stealth. Then when the guy gets low or tries to run, I switch to D/D and try to finish him off quickly.

Wow… Now that I think about it, this is actually a really tough question! Unlike warrior GS/rifle, we have so many options to level but it’s really hard to say, “Yep, that’s the best way to do it.” But let me give it a shot anyways.

Let’s put it this way, if I were to level an engi again… I will experiment with the following given how I like to play (with little patience).

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQFAUl0picnpynF1rIxIFdm0hKgfA

Notes:

• First I’ll go down the tools tree. If my damage is still too low, I’ll grab static discharge first. If damage is ok, I’ll grab speedy kit. I cannot live without permanent swiftness because engi doesn’t have any good “leaping forward” skills on short CD.
• Then I’ll go grab cloaking device because invis vs. mobs is cheesy. Also medkit’s biggest weakness is being immobilized. After that just do whatever you think will help you most.
• Keep fury up (with medkit 5) as often as possible.
• Single target damage: Rifle 3 and Rifle 5 + toolbelt skills is the key for quick kills. I wouldn’t drop rifle turret for quick kills.
• Vets and harder stuff: stack confuse and use smoke bomb or blocks. Or kite and drop bombs/box of nails behind you while running in circle. Will probably drop rifle turret to shoot mob if I’m running in circles.
• AoE: Bombs and rifle 5.
• Escape: Turn invis with big ol’ bomb, smoke bomb, and explode rifle turret for head start in running. Drop box of nails if necessary. Run away while dropping med-packs will automatically pick them up.
• There are a lot of other tricks that you can do but you’ll have to experiment.
• Keep gear updated especially the rifle as a big chunk of damage should be coming from your rifle skills.
• Be flexible. Some zones you should switch out some skills to make your life easier. It’s very situation so I’ll leave that to you.

You should totally take a look at this awesome Engi guide.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/The-TANKCAT-build-Prybar-some-faces/first#post870491

Even if you don’t use the build, there are some really good ideas in there.

It is common knowledge that warriors have the easiest time to level. Heck, even a leveling guardian with greatsword can spin-to-win faster than your average leveling engineer.

Now… the build you’re linking…
a) It’s not a leveling build. It has some kind of purpose I’m sure, but leveling isn’t it.
b) You can’t have both juggernaut and H.G.H at level 60. That means you’re kittened by half of the potential might stacks. Probably more since I doubt leveling people would spend gold for runes. (I don’t agree with the selected rune as well…)
c) IMHO a condition build like the one linked will never beat a zerker geared toon in killing-speed unless you can AoE a bunch of things together. Tbh I don’t agree with condition-based flamethrower anyways, so maybe I’m biased.
d) For a build with so much focus on burning… it’s pretty ironic that P/P is much better for burning things than the flamethrower. Maybe you should stick rocket boots in there, the toolbelt skill burns things pretty good.

Look, if you really want killing speed you should try some form of static discharge builds. I understand that you may like the flamethrower, but from my experience even with all those might stacks it still kills slower than other “DPS” builds engineers have. The flamethrower build has its merits, but optimized DPS isn’t it right now. Maybe it’ll be better when sigil effects kick in.

Hahaha, I was too late to post my version of Cenile’s build. I have 1 trait difference, and I added rune of dolyaks to withstand AoE a little bit better in WvWvW. You just stand in the back/middle of the zerg and chuck grenades. At the first sign of trouble, you leg it because you’re still squishy.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQFAUl0piY38SfF17IyYGd2EC+Qe95Bb1WQIA;TgAg0CnosxYjwGrNObk2A
(you have to copy and paste to URL to work.)

Very much a general zerg build, not really all that good for small group PvP. If you want to run with small (havoc) groups often, you should try and find some good pvp static discharge roaming build with your setup.

Just curious… what are you using this for? WvWvW? Are you zerging or roaming? You have a lot of escapes that screams PvP.

Considering that Christmas event is coming soon (Dec 14 – Jan 3), all these over-thinking about tiers is a little useless since the event will mess everything up for all the servers. If you think Halloween was bad… Well I didn’t do any of the Halloween events and I only showed up to get beat up by SoR every night, but this time even I am thinking about doing the events and forget about WvWvW for a bit.

TLDR: We should just go out, have fun, and brutally murder each other, repeatedly non-stop.

- Frillip, TC guardian trainee who specializes in handing out badges

Ok I gave it a shot but it’s really more of a “fun” build from the top of my head… It could perform ridiculously bad in practice.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQFAUlIqyUnqSyF17IxIFkW0hUgfBDSRe9LA;TkAA2CnowxgjAHLOOck4MsA

Still have 10 trait points to go wherever you want.

It has the good fun burst from rifle skill 3 + 5, toolbelt surprise shot and throw wrench + static discharge.

CC’s you have rifle net shot, box of nails, and magnet.

Note: It has 2 combo fields (water + smoke), and you have 4 blast and 1 jump finisher.

Here’s how I might try to use it (untested).
- Drop turrets (all of them).
- Toolkit→magnet unsuspecting victim.
- Supply crate, box of nails, (prybar?), rifle 3, smoke screen, rifle 5, blow up all turrets (go invis).
- Run away or commence secondary spiking with toolbelt surprise shot, throw wench, etc.

Really looking forward to hand out badges with my lvl 40 asura guardian again this week!

And yes, pie is always better than cake.

Once an engi is down and there are nobody to rez or no nearby mobs about to die, that engi is dead. The engi downed skills are just sad.

I play WvWvW 90% of the time, so my experience are really WvWvW oriented.

I run with rifle, medkit, and grenade kits. I actually like the rocket turret a lot but I need my escapes so I don’t have the slot for it (yes escapes are very necessary with my fighting style). I haven’t fully figured out the other kits and they seem to conflict with my particular style, so I skip them. Here is my approach, note that I am also geared tanky because I am strange.

Gap closer: switch on med kit for free swiftness (speedy kit or superior rune), med kit
skill 5 to stack more swiftness and get fury. Switch to rifle and use net shot for immobilize. Keep swiftness up, keep trying for fury until you can chase down your target and get a good immobilization in.

Spike: Get within melee range with rifle on. Supply crate (stun) if immobilize is going to wear off. Rifle skill 3, toolbelt grenade barrage (always do this with your weapon and not kit), rifle skill 5 (should hit both leap off and landing). Supply crate (stun) if you haven’t already. Keep target CC’ed, use rifle skill 4 if necessary, and do as much damage as you can before you need to move outside of melee range.

Time in between spikes (waiting for CDs): I stay mid-range at this point. Strafe and fight in a circle or charge/dodge through opponent. Use grenade skill 3 and 4 as often as possible (yes, learn how to chuck them behind you in a hurry). Rifle net shot to help with kiting. Run away lots with swiftness up (LOSing your target), and use medpacks while running away all the time. It’s hit-run, hit-run, and wait for another chance to spike. Never be afraid to just run away to reset a fight.

It’s a pretty simple hit and run style. With 100% swiftness up-time, med packs and toolbelt heal, you will regen a lot more than most other classes. If you can get the hang of using poison grenade and then do a rifle/supply crate blast attack to apply weakness, then it’ll be even better.

A bit about grenades:
As mentioned, you should enable the option of fast-cast ground targeting if you want to use grenades. It’ll probably take a while for you to get used to it. At level 60+, grenade kit is the strongest anti siege weapon option we have because of its 1500 range, its high dps (all 3 will hit a stationary target), and it explodes through walls. It is our best area of denial kit in a zerg situation. Unless you want to specialize in a particular role, grenade kit is a very good kit to learn its ins-and-outs for general WvWvW.

Ironvos.9014:

I’ll start building the oil from now on

I sure hope more people feel the same way as you do. I am pretty tired of trying to supply run to build every single oil in one of those BL keeps/garrison when everybody else just run off right after the mesmer sweep.

Yes I am from TC and a lot of us don’t understand how awesome oil pot is.

Here are some of my ideas.

If you want your engineer to survive longer in WvWvW, you should consider what are the most common ways you die from. Somewhere along those lines of thoughts should be how to deal with CC’s, thief surprise backstab (critical damage) bursts, inability to escape, and lastly condition damage. There are a lot of different ways to deal with these, but one of the best utility skill we have is Elixir S. The defensive traits that proc off being CC’ed or receiving a crit are also very good at helping you to stay alive.

Out of all our elites, supply crate is the best one if small battles happened. If all you do is follow the zerg, mortar is actually not bad in sieges.

I like the medkit. You can spam some healing skill proc from superior rune slot 6 bonus using a medkit. The only time medkit sucks is when you’re immobilized and you can’t get out of it.

I have the same experience as OP. In most small team fights inside W3 the enemy thieves always seem to ignore everybody else and target me. I think it’s due to the fact that grenade builds are mostly glass-cannons. I run a 30/0/20/20/0 grenade/rifle build that I came up with because I solo or roam in small teams a lot and I need the survival traits. I also run with around 2900 armor.

Elixir S is really good against their opening, and I also use the traited supply crate (guaranteed net turret). Most thieves will be right on top of you (most likely behind you), so even if you can’t see him just drop the supply crate right on (or behind) yourself. Pay attention to see if your supply crate turrets are shooting at seemingly empty air because that’s where the thief is (AI is not bothered by culling). Drop your biggest bursts (such grenade barrage, rifle 5), spam grenades, and just hope for the best (i.e. the net turret successfully immobilized him and he hasn’t gotten out of it yet).

Never try to outrun a thief because from my experience you can’t. You always want to hit them back because most of the FoTM are glass-cannon backstab builds. You need to pressure them and hope they make a mistake.

The only reason I would choose superior rune of the Centaur is to group swiftness buff (on every CD using medkit), and to get away from spending 10 trait points on speedy kit while keeping permanent swiftness (need medkit skill 5 as well).

I tried that build (in W3) and it can spike really well. The most amount of burst damage I could do came from rifle skills + grenade barrage + static discharge up close and personal, but it could be problematic in a glass cannon build without reliable stealth. Chucking grenades from far away was actually not all that awesome (probably just pvp issue). I don’t know how that translate into PvE, but you might also want to consider the grenade + elixir build as well.