Guild Wars 2

While leveling my Ele, I found that either Dagger Dagger or Scepter Dagger w/ a conjured weapon in the bar were the best for quickly clearing areas.

Dagger Dagger offers a little better mobility after 30 since you can grab windborn daggers for the speed boost. But either way you have Ride the Lightning from Dagger offhand.

Personally I liked the damage that scepter mainhand offered as it has a little more burst potential.

I suggest the conjured weapons as utilities for this build since the auto-attacks for scepter main are very slow and lack luster.

Silberfisch.3046:

Hmm, may I ask why people usually use the rifle turret as a third utility? If you want the blast finisher for might stacking wouldn’t Throw Mine work as well?
I’m aware that the detonate turret tool belt skill does more damage than the mine, and that the mine might be more prone to “accudentally” going off because a target stepped on it. But couldn’t that be offset by gaining a tool belt skill that can be used in addition to the active utility?
Again I am aware that the minefield usually lands all over the place but that can be at least partially compensated for by good positioning? Or am I overlooking something else entirely?

The cooldown on rifle turret is incredibly short, and has a very short cooldown toolbelt skill. While the toolbelt skill doesn’t deal a lot of damage, it is instant cast which allows it to be used even while knocked down, and combined with static discharge as many builds do it actually deals a significant amount of damage.

Additionally the blast finisher for the turret is centered on you, and not the turret, which makes it much easier to chain, unlike throw mine which is centered on the mine itself.

Another plus to speccing explosives over tools is the added damage from bomb on dodge. Which I find to be very helpful added DPS.

Looking forward to seeing more of these videos, so I hope you’ll keep it up.

It looks like this build is decent in PvP. Do you have anything to say about PvE? According to the beginning you said you’ve used it for both, but I’m curious what your experience in PvE was?

If I read this correctly it sounds like the protective bubble will only apply to the newly spawned turret, which to me sounds less useful. If it works like the picture in the patch implies then I think it will be pretty decent.

That is of course assuming that they fix the base issues with turrets so they actually hit hard enough.

Phineas Poe.3018:

If you’re not a fan of full Berserker, Celestial is a good alternative as I outlined in the OP. My ascended armor set is Celestial.

I will probably go with that for my ascended gear when I get around to crafting it.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Fall.8475:

Also I think using bombs requires close range. In zerk gear will require lots of dodging.

What are you using instead?

I’ve found that if in a well balanced group Zerk is fine since you have a lot of well balanced support and damage so you’re not taking a ton of damage. But I keep a set of Knights with me in case of a PUG that doesn’t have the same balance. You trade damage slightly for extra survivability.

Alternatively you can go the hybrid route if the rest of your group isn’t posting much condi damage and run something like rampagers. Like I said admittedly zerker is much better damage output if you can stay alive, but being dead means you DPS is 0 so when in doubt run gear that will keep you alive.

For what it’s worth, for skills that don’t target you can still get SD to hit your target, you just need to aim it with your camera as it travels in whatever direction your camera is facing.

It is certainly more difficult to do (especially in a PvP setting) but I’ve had some good luck with it at least hitting off my BoB.

Jakzor.4160:

question:

are you able to use this build at fractal lvl 20+?

I probably wouldn’t recommend it unless you have a really organized group. I’ve been trying to build in fractals lately and at level 11-12 I already feel a little too soft. It may just be that I’m doing something wrong, but trying to be in melee range for the burst rotation means you end up going down a lot. You can obviously stay at range and just use your rifle/SD damage, but then you’re losing a lot of you damage output.

To put a more technical spin on this, yes, the range of the turrets is not the issue with turrets, we all know that. However if you look at it from Anets prospective they can’t possibly fix everything in one patch, especially something with as many flaws as turrets. This looks like a step in the right direction though. They are fixing the low hanging fruit. The broken range trait was probably the easiest one technically to fix.

Given that I would imaging we can see some other improvements in the coming releases. Having worked in software development for quite some time I know how long these things can take, but it would be great if we could get some sign (a wink or a nod would suffice) that they are looking at the turrets or are at least planning on it.

I play an Asura engineer, and I will say that if you are looking to have cool looking armor/show off you weapons then Asura Engineer is the worst possible combination. A lot of the medium armor looks weird on Asura, and due to our size you can hardly see our weapons.

That being said I have found combinations that work. I am currently wearing the Magitech armor skin from the gem store and using the Azure Cannon rifle skin (which is a cool magic looking rifle skin) And it looks pretty sweet.

I’m not at home right now or I’d post a screen shot. Personally I dislike the char character models but I know that I’m the majority in my opinion.

tattoohead.3217:

I’ll come at this from a different angle, drop condition and go pow crit! Condo nades are fine and the above posts are quite helpful but tbh I switched because my fingers can’t take the abuse with nade spam.

I run 0/20/10/10/30 SD rifle build with med kit, tool kit, rifle turret, & rocket boots. I’ll switch rocket boots for elixir b or goggles sometimes but I do love my boots. I have 105% crit damage without buffs or food and 65% crit. Rifle #1 crits for just over 2k, #3 crits for about 6k and #5 crits for 4k (on the lift off) and 8k (on the landing) then you add in SD crits for about 2k per plus the actual skill and long story short I have no problem killing people.

Conditions are great but if your havng an issue with the build experiment with other builds, find a playstyle that fits your needs and master it.

I agree, after playing a condi engi for a long time and getting frustrated, I realized that the play style just wasn’t for me. Once I picked up a SD build I started having a lot more fun. Now granted I’m still not at a point where I can reliably win 1v1s but I have a lot better win ration with this build than any other.

I also sometimes run a power FT/EG build which is also a lot of fun but really more suited for PvE than WvW. Bottom line is if Condi’s aren’t working for you, try direct damage.

Aphoticrain.8420:

“Picking them up reduces the redeployment recharge by 25%”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Turret

I was aware of this, I just wasn’t sure if there was anything else. But the point about healing turret is a valid one. I agree with you that I wouldn’t mind seeing healing turrets base cooldown increased if it meant being able to trait for a decrease on the others.

The problem I have with the picking them up being the only cool down reduction is that accelerant packed turrets counteracts this mentality. If I’m taking the trait, I am most likely going to want to be detonating my turrets more often than not and that means I’m always getting the full cooldown.

So with the update to accelerant packed turrets, I’ve been trying to brew a turret build that could be used for PvE (mostly general roaming). Now before we get into the typical debate on turrets and the list of bugs, I am aware that turrets have their issues (a lot of them) but I still think they are fun to play with in a non-competative environment.

This brings me to the topic of this thread. Every other skill type for engineer has a trait that reduces the cool down on them except turrets from what I can tell. I thought maybe speedy gadgets but they aren’t considered gadgets I guess. So my question is am I missing something and if not, why don’t they have a cooldown reduction trait?

Chaba.5410:

Which server are you on? There’s a big one on Fort Aspenwood.

There is?!? How was I not aware of this?

My only concern with this build is that it’s intentions are split. You have all the nice utility for blast fields….but that means you’re destroying your turrets which removes some of your strength.

If this is your plan that’s not a problem, but if I were going that route I would probably take some of the points out of inventions and put them into firearms. So that you can still deal good damage with your pistols. You won’t need steel plating if you’re going to be detonating your turrets often, and that means you can focus on using your accelerant packed turrets as major CC.

Just my $0.02 but I’m also very excited to play with turrets post patch.

Hmm apparently the F keys are a consistent thing for most. Perhaps I should re-visit them.

@insanemaniac: I would certainly love to have a few more buttons on my mouse even if just to have an easy key for Team Speak push to talk. But right now I have to work with what I have.

My only issue with you setup Kanga is the use of the f1-f4 keys. Unfortunately I have rather short fingers and have a very hard time hitting them reliably.

Alright,

So it’s no secret that of any profession the engineer requires the most number of key-strokes to achieve optimal effect. Whether you’re kit swapping/tossing elixers etc we are constantly using almost all of our skill keys.

My question is two fold:

1. What do people use/recommend for a key-bind setup for engineer to help reduce fatigue

and

2. What are some recommended ways for training a new key-binding system.

My current setup for reference is as follows:

weapons 1-5 (default)
Profession Skills (q,e,r,t)
Heal Skill (Z)
Utilities (x,c,v)
Elite: (G)
Dodge (Middle Mouse Button)
Movement(W,A,S,D)

I’m glad to see someone putting some time into turret testing. I’m still hopeful that the coming patch will make these more viable than they already are.

I have 2 questions:

1. What weapon do you use? I’ve seen some recommend rifle for the CC but pistol shield has more versatility. So what do you use?

2. What does your gear look like? I haven’t tested yet whether turrets benefit from increased power or if it’s better to just do a condi build.

Anyway, thanks for the guide.

Don’t get discouraged! Keep making videos this was really great to watch.

Let me preface this by saying I am primarily a PvE player with a bit of WvW thrown in.

In my opinion there are two ways the turret improvements could go, and I agree completely with the previous post about bug fixing being the number one change that should be made. Without properly working turrets it’s impossible to start making improvements. That being said, as people have mentioned one of the major flaws for turrets in PvE is their incredible lack of durability. Any AoE damage pretty much drops them.

So here are the two ways I could see them going:

1. Embrace the lack of durability and use your turrets much like signets. The tool-belt skill is essentially your ‘passive buff’ and the drop/overcharge is your activated ability with some extra benefit (ie a little more DPS) if you leave it around. So to make this method of turret use actually viable more needs to be done like what they did for the thumper turret. Add some extra benefits to the tool-belt skills. It’s really what makes the healing turret so much more used over the others. The pure utility of the main skill and the tool belt (ie: water combo field) make you not really care that you can’t leave it around.

2. The other way this could go is the more traditional improvements, give us some way of improving toughness of our turrets through traits/gear, and condense the trait lines for them so I’m not all over the place. Perhaps reduce cool downs enough so that if my turret gets nuked I don’t feel as bad about it.

Just my $0.02.

I like the concept behind these builds and would certainly consider running them in group PvE. Unfortunately I do a lot of Solo-ing and often find these types of builds lacking in damage output. From what I’m reading you’re saying the Damage output isn’t that bad?

Also side note, glad to finally see a thread about more than just complaining about the Engi.

I’ve been running a FT/EG build with much success. See here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Flamethrower-Elixir-Gun-Rifle-build

I’ve used it for WvW/Map Completion/Aether Pirates Dungeon and Fractals with much success. It has good utility, damage and survival.

Just started using this build last night. I will say…holy learning curve. I’ve found myself really fumbling with the rotations and making sure I keep my buffs up. But….on the other side of this, I have never felt more powerful as an engineer.

The only thing I miss from my previous build is the ability to use Elixer R for self rez, but the added survivability from from this build makes up for that. I can’t wait to see what I can do when I get a full set of gear to compliment it. (right now I’m just wearing MF gear while puttering around in Orr).

Thanks for posting this!

Direksone.3867:

All this shows that Turrets work fine! Maybe need a slight boost, but people just don’t know how to play with them. Like Rangers complaining about their pets, it’s one of your core mechanics (not really the case with turrets as is with pets, but still) and, quite harshly put: learn to play with it.

I leveled with turrets and loved it. They can tank pretty well and in conjunction with pistol/shield I could also make sure they stayed away from my turrets so they would live longer. Traiting into turrets to make them more durable is worthwhile for simple mobs, in dungeons and the like it is obsolete, UNLESS you place them well out of reach and such. Each turret calls for a different scenario and they all work great if you ask me. Weak: yes, but not terribly so. Eventhough I now focus on Elixers and the Elixer Gun some turrets are still worthwhile to take here and there!

I agree with you for the most part. I think turrets are playable, but as compared to other builds they are just not as efficient. You remove a lot of your utility by building to turrets, since in order to make them function you need to devote a lot of your traits to them. In my mind if a few adjustments could be made to the turret tool belt skills to give you a few more options it would be fine.

For example:
1. Making the net turret tool belt some sort of stun breaker.
2. Give a single condition remove to the healing turret tool belt
3. Make the thumper turrets tool belt a know back
4. Make the Flame turrets tool belt a blind

In short give the tool belt for each turret a weaker version of its overload ability.

I would love to see some of the cast times for the tool kit reduced. I don’t understand why it takes my a good 3 sec to drop a bunch of caltrops. It really takes the usefullness right out of it.

My main problem with training for a turret build is that I often find that there aren’t enough synergistic traits for turrets. There are a few decent traits to buff then and some tool kit utility but in order to get enough benefit from the traits you have to spec in all of the lines. I’m still messing with it to see if there is some way for it to be visible. And I’ll be sure to report back if I find anything. I would really like to see some adjustment of the skills in a future patch though that would really make my day.

I for one am hoping to see the turret skills get improved with the next patch. Rumor has it the engi is getting quite a few changes.

Time: 17:20 est
Area: Caudicus Manor
Reward:15 tokens

My group and I complete CM explorable yesterday. This was my first time ever running it and once again while most of my party received the 60 token reward I was only given 15. I see now that you guys are planning a patch for Monday which is great, but is there any plan for redistributing the tokens for those people affected? Not that I ultra upset about it because well I enjoyed doing the dungeons, it would just be nice to get the rewards adjusted if possible

I ran Ascalonian Catacombs for the first time in a few weeks today, the majority of my party received 60 tears, I received 15. Unfortunately I didn’t take a screen cap or anything, but I figured it was worth posting anyway.