Guild Wars 2

With rocket boots you can take advantage of the terrain as well. It’s rare that I run them (although I’m starting to do so more often) but as you’re running you can jump across things that the majority of the zerg just won’t be able to follow. Even if they can (may have to jump down, swim, move a bit, then climb back up) that may give you enough time to stealth somehow and run away or swiftness just might be enough to get out completely. Generally speaking you can’t outrun a zerg although if they are dumb then bombs and nails can significantly slow them down.

Non-engineers giving advice to engineers (who don’t have a lot of experience playing engineer) is not a good idea. Engineer has a lot of capabilities that people who don’t have that experience or don’t know the profession well probably won’t even know about. Your engi needs to get on youtube and Wolfineer’s engi handbook and start looking at how to actually play an engineer since there are a lot of non-intuitive things that engi can do that require things like an 11-button combo within 4 seconds (I posted this in my other thread) but that combo can give you something like 8 seconds of stealth under the right conditions or 15 stacks of might. Knowing stuff like that can change how you work together. It really bugs me whenever I’m with a PUG (or even some regulars that I think ought to know better) where they just go charging in when I could have given them 15 stacks of might or stealth or retaliation or whatever if they’d waited an extra 4 seconds.

Same thing with flipping camps in WvW; if they just charge in then the NPC’s won’t stack so I’m less effective as an engi. Here’s an example:

Let’s say that I’m taking NE camp with one other person, maybe a mesmer or ele (doesn’t really matter too much). Now what I will do if I solo the camp is aggro the guards from behind the south building where there’s a small gap that I can break LOS on easily. That will bring in everyone except the lord and I can AoE them out of existence and kite around the building if I need to. Takes me about 30 seconds to kill them all on average and it’s been a very long time since I’ve failed. I can then kill the lord at my leisure since I’ve never been successful with aggro on him before.

So, if the mesmer/ele/whoever charges in, I can no longer aggro the guards and get them to stack and that severely limits what I can do, especially if the guards spread out. What should happen is that we both go to that spot and I aggro the guards and my companion either moves to the W or stealths (stealth is my preference). Once I stack up the guards and start destroying them, companion can go out and kill the lord and not have to worry about any of the other guards being around unless I seriously screw up. Also, if we coordinate a bit more, I can stealth my companion fairly easily long enough to avoid the guards or I can provide a bunch of stacks of might to make killing the lord easier.

This is true for other camps too. The way it works (for my build which is 3-kit condi usually) is to aggro the guards, break LOS so that the guards stack, then AoE them to death, kiting around buildings if they don’t stack well. if I have a companion or two, they can focus whatever I can’t AoE or help me out by removing condi since I’m bad at that.

If I’m fighting other players then either my companions directly engage them so that I can stay back and use grenades since their range is ridiculous, or I can move in and CC them while applying conditions and my companions can then crush them in some way. How this works depends a bit on party composition but my point is that as an experienced engi player, I know precisely what my build is capable of and what its weaknesses are so I can figure out the optimal way to work with my party based on their capabilities.

I was in tPvP the other day with a support engi that had a bomb heal build and was about support and survivability. I stood next to him and spammed condition on all the things and he kept me alive and pushed enemies back out of melee range (still in grenade range though). It was pretty awesome as I’d never seen a build like that before. I may have to try that at some point although it’s not really my play style.

Ooops.8694:

All in all: engineers can only do things another class does better, most of them are even more useless.

That’s the interesting thing to me: a good engi can take on the role of many of the other classes. Some classes can stack might more easily or stealth more frequently/longer or whatever, but engi can stealth, might, retaliate, heal, CC, DPS, condi, etc. and do all of these things quite well. As it’s been pointed out though, many people don’t know how to do a lot of these things. For example:

Might stacking-
1. HT
2. BoB, count to 2
3. Fire field (bomb 2)
4. detonate HT
5. Supply crate
(BoB goes off somewhere here)
6. Several options:
6a. EGun 4 and cancel, then shield 4 twice
6b. shield 4 twice then rocket shoes
6c. flame 2 twice then shield 4 twice
6d. Egun4 with cancel, shield 4 twice, then rocket shoes.

This will give 15-18 stacks of might to your party. Replace fire field with whatever other field you want for similar results (watch invisibility though since a lot of this will damage enemies and knock you out of stealth but still useful for sneaking into keeps in wvw). You can get yourself to 21 stacks of might by running FT with juggernaught and 25 stacks of might if you put sigil of battle on top of that but those won’t go to the rest of your party.

For those of you counting, that’s 11 keystrokes that have to be executed within 4 seconds and the timing has to be almost perfect or you’ll miss one (pro tip: gaming mouse required). If you’re in combat, you’ll be dodging the whole time while you do this also. This takes practice to pull off and is hard to figure out. Most players can’t do this but in my opinion it’s stuff like this that makes engi extremely valuable if the player is good.

I have a Logitech g700s. Not as many buttons as the g600 but still quite useful. Mappings:
wasd- move/strafe
middle click- dodge
mouse wheel left and right- about face (can never remember which one it is in a hurry so I just use either and I’m never wrong)
shift + mouse wheel left or right – weapon swap (I forget what actual key I have mapped for it but mouse is mapped to shift + that key)
c – skill 1
2,3,4,5 – skills 2-5
mouse side buttons (1-4) – skills 2-5
shift + 2-5 – toolbelt skills 1-4
Top three mouse buttons- kits 7, 8, 9 (mapped to shift +x, shift +c, shift + v)
r – elite skill
e – turret

The way I use this is as follows:
my hand never leaves wasd. I can switch kits on the top three buttons of my mouse easily. My thumb naturally rests on the ‘c’ key anyway so that’s my grenade spam button. Other skills are my thumb on the side of the mouse. I grab the shift key with my pinky and mouse buttons are now utility skills. I can drop HT or supply crate with my left index finger but that’s the only time I actually need to move a finger off of wasd in order to do something. It took a lot of practice to get used to this but I really like it now and can’t really play with any other setup.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Jeff.5489:

Rangers and condition engineers don’t mix well when the ranger can clear conditions. Empathic bond (?) with pet clears 3 conditions every 10 seconds and they get a few other clears if they’re traited correctly, but the pet one is huge. Kill the pet and then condi the kitten out of the ranger. Reflect is also hugely useful.

What LB ranger build uses that trait?

I think he is referring more to the general builds most players are using. This traits is very rarely in any of those builds.

It was one that I saw in WvW a couple days ago. There were several of us pounding on this ranger and we just couldn’t even damage him and no condi would stick. Not sure what that actual build was though or if this is a more common thing, very possible that it could just have been something unusual.

Rangers and condition engineers don’t mix well when the ranger can clear conditions. Empathic bond (?) with pet clears 3 conditions every 10 seconds and they get a few other clears if they’re traited correctly, but the pet one is huge. Kill the pet and then condi the kitten out of the ranger. Reflect is also hugely useful.

Lupanic.6502:

Devs do not read the Engineer Forum.

False