Guild Wars 2

Grenades will accumulate damage if you queue/throw them in a continuous barrage with quickness. I’ve seen it a few times.

The worst however is when you auto attack with the flamethrower and you don’t see any floating damage values. You have to swap weapons to reset the bug. Grenades also have a tendency to launch into space when there’s an inclined surface nearby and your ground targeting reticle is sloped. The interesting side effect is you can get very long range attacks as the grenades don’t explode until they collide with a surface. So if you aim downwards at a cliff face, if you get one of the grenades to miss the cliff, it will fall all the way to the bottom and hit whatever is down there. The bad thing is sometimes during heavy fighting the collision detection fails and you have grenades fall through the surface or through walls.

The scrapper was actually decent at launch, but admittedly Anet dropped the bomb on that class about 3 months after the release of HoT. Today that elite is quite lumbering than it use to be, and I have to say I haven’t bothered with the hammer since. Sadly, I feel holosmith is going to suffer the same fate 3 months from now, but we’ll see if Anet listened to our beta feedback and properly balanced the class for launch.

Despite that, the rest of the engineer is enjoyable. It’s not a profession for everyone and at the end of the day you just have to pick something that synergizes with your play style. For me, I prefer a jack of all trades profession that can do it all with good results. Other professions excel in one area and are poor in another, the engineer is quite balanced across the board.

As an engineer main from the beginning, I am used to spending more time focusing off combat. So for me it’s a non-issue to quickly scan below to see my current heat level. However, as a QOL enhancement I wouldn’t mind having the option to centre a smaller bar above my toon. I also don’t believe monitoring your toon skin colour is a valid argument though because there’s a lot of visual noise during combat that can easily cover that up. Plus, a trait that lets you expand your heat level to 150% means you’re going to be in the red for quite some time before popping. If you want to maximize your heat up-time, you’re going to have to monitor that progress bar.

Captain Obvious.6951:

He only has a few weapon choices.

We have few primary weapon choices, but our kit skills are unique that no one else has and each of them are useful and cool in their own way.

Captain Obvious.6951:

Pistols, being 900 range, aren’t really 900 range. Their highest damage ability, Pistol 4, is essentially a melee skill.

Pistol auto attack is also powerful. Most mobs I can lazily attack from a distance and stack up a lot of bleeds, poisons, and burn from a safe distance. Static shot is also very powerful. Some mobs do rapid attacks and will get decimated when they have confusion on them. Alchemical pistol play use to be very effective in PvP back in the day too, before power creep and balance changes.

Captain Obvious.6951:

Grenade kit is 900 range, but very hard to hit anyone from that range so usually have to be like 300-600 range away for good effectiveness.

Bomb kit is melee range.

Depends on how effective you are with them. I generally don’t have a problem landing long range throws. Also, both kits allow you to kite while still doing full damage. Try doing that with a warrior who can only swing his sword in front of him. An engineer can run in circles and kill a champion without ever taking a scratch.

Captain Obvious.6951:

His elite Mortar kit IS long range, but the damage is so pathetic and useless it’s very rarely if ever used by anyone.

It has its uses, even in a WvW scenario. The double orbital strike use to be a strong burst on a zerk engineer back before Anet changed its mechanics. The mortar we have today is hundreds of times better than what we had at release, so I fully welcome that kit with open arms and love it for its extra heal as well.

Engineers have the best ranged and spammable AOE abilities in the game, with strong condition application and CC. My advice? Just practice a bit more with kits, rotations, and play styles. Ground attacks are a huge competitive advantage over locked targets. Also, don’t play GW2 under the guise that there should be fully ranged professions. Just like DOTA, most people who flock to range only want to play it safe from the back, but if you want any progression you’re going to have to get into the thick of it.

Snakebyte.2804:

What would you recommend for a mortar build?

Pure zerk or pure viper (mainly for the condi duration / support role) and just bomb the enemy from a distance. Explosive line + Alchemy + Tools. Mortar is your main weapon, so all your skills should be dedicated to escapes and defenses. My favorite combo is rocket boots, elixir s, and elixir u for your own missile defense + quickness/bursts. It’s a fun build and something different to the grunt 1 mashing trains. Has a bit of strategy to it.

As for holosmith in WvW… It’s like that orc in Lord of the Rings in the battle of Helm’s Deep. The one that’s running with a torch as the other orcs cheer him on as he suicide bombs himself to open up the enemy defenses. If you can protect yourself from CC and you prepared 50% heat in advance, you can lay some heavy duty damage. But, don’t expect to come out of that one alive.

Have to agree, the damage is way to high. I steamrolled every champion in the mists. Although I could solo them before as vanilla engie, it was no where near that fast with cruise control turned on. Anet has much balancing work to do before releasing this xpack. I’d rather this elite be balanced by launch rather than put up with another scrapper situation where we get comfortable with the elite, only for it to get nerfed over the next year and we lose out on time/money invested.

100% rifle guy here. CC is king in this game, more so with breakbars in PvE. Photon forge will provide all the melee you need, so sword is overkill in the melee department. Rifle will provide the perfect opener with net shot or overcharged shot if you have stability. Once your foe is locked down, go go gadget photon mode and swing your light stick. Rifle will also provide an extra gap closer with leap shot, in addition to your holo leap. Plus, having a predator strapped to your back is so much more badkitten compared to anything else. Gotta look good for all those corpses you’ll be standing over.

I love desert themes so I’m looking forward to seeing more of what the Crystal Desert has to offer. I don’t really feel the increased scale of map size that Anet advertised. Feels much like the previous GW2 maps in terms of scale, even when taking into account the locked region. Artistically it’s well done, but it looks like they compressed the distance down for some themes and didn’t expand out in areas that would have benefited it.

Part of me was hoping I’d see ESO Alik’r desert style cities and map size . Would have been cool if they could upgrade the GW2 engine to render sprawling cities and large scale maps like that. Nevertheless, this is a start for them and if they make bank on the expansion, they can continue to upgrade their tech along the way.

I would say you can melee all mobs no problem and they’re not as difficult as I remember HoT once was (with the exception of one bounty champion). However, you will need to know when to dodge or run away to avoid some special attacks. This is where a ranged skill or good condition damage will benefit because you can still be effective while you’re getting out of harms way. IMO you should have at least one ranged and one melee weapon on you at all times to balance out your combat, otherwise the fights could drag on.

So.. bomb kit basically?

FYI, you can ground target your grenades and mortar shells to avoid reflection. I do it all the time and score splash dmg against those who feel safe behind their walls. Orbital strike use to be powerful when you could cast it twice, but it’s still effective if you want to score a single burst shot from a distance.

I think FT is fine as it is. Since the perma stability buff Anet gave us, asking them to make changes to the FT will likely only result in them nerfing it. Best they stay away from it as FT is a comfortable PvE weapon that doesn’t require piano lessons. I’ve also used it from time to time in T1 zerg fights and I think ppl are blowing retaliation out of proportion as it’s something I rarely ever encounter. I’m more worried about necro wells melting the flesh off my bones than I am about retal.

I like the changes too. Mainly planting mines when you dodge roll was a nice buff that I like to play with now. It also gives me a reason to use the explosive line because I really hate the fidgety behaviour of grenades as of late (skill/server lag craziness) and that crazy bomb fuse delay. So now my engineer is throwing out mines galore and everything goes boom. Synergizes really well with the adrenal implant + throw mines + bunker down mines. Or you can trade off bunker down for invigorating speed to get vigor on swiftness for that sweet sweet 100% endurance regen. Dodging is now a fun combat mechanic

It will be interesting to see how to mix this up with the holosmith too since you get bonus mine dmg with everything else that’s going on. Good time to be an engineer!

Hard to chill out when our new core mechanic is about generating heat :P

LilBiM.3581:

The faster we get on this ball hopefully the less likely we are to repeat what happened to the Engineer in HoT.

The scrapper was actually good on release day. We had enjoyable cool downs, good daze and stun abilities, decent power damage, and responsive attacks. Since then, the elite spec has nosedived with balance changes that I don’t even want to go anywhere near it. Everything about that elite feels so sluggish and ineffective now.

This is why I don’t care about new elites for the expansion and why they are not the reason to buy the expansion. They are designed to look powerful to lure competitive players back into the game. The upcoming balance patches will eventually modify the elite specs so much that it won’t even be what you originally purchased. I already have some bets with friends about how the Holosmith will be nerfed in the coming months (I’m looking at you Hard Light Arena).

The only skills topic worth its weight in gold is the new barrier combat mechanic, something holosmiths don’t have access to. This is something I can see most players are going to want to have in party comps. It is one feature I think Anet will buff instead of nerf in the coming months to add more interesting gameplay mechanics. So kudos to Necormancers this round. Like what alacrity did to Mesmer popularity in HoT, I think Barrier will do for Necros in PoF (this is their expansion). As for holosmiths, meh. Enjoy your new toy

Nah. All you need is a SAB sword, SAB shield, SAB backpack and mini, with a SAB boom box playing mad tunes when you trigger your Photonic SAB mode. There is no greater power in all of Tyria that can best that.

I don’t think it’s a letdown, but it’s definitely not the selling point for the expansion compared to some other classes (Necro and Warrior I think are the two most interesting changes). Holosmith is just a toy to play around with and shake up the usual. It’s basically Necro’s reaper brought to Engineer, but can actually get you killed rather than save you :P Like scrapper, I’m pretty sure most engie mains are going to play with it for a bit, but then cherry pick the better parts of it and move on, or outright return back to classic engineer builds.

As for the selfish bit, I’ve always seen the engineer as selfish and that’s part of why I love the profession. I like being a jack of all trades and self sufficient such that I don’t need the support of others to be useful in any part of the game.

Positives:
1. We have an AOE pull skill that isn’t dependent on swapping to a bomb kit at a fixed time.

2. We have some flashy skills.

3. Hard Light Arena is the take home skill for the Holosmith. I consider that more competitive than Revenant’s Glint legend and I would easily find a spot for that in my skillbar.

Negatives:
1. Skills generally have large cool downs and minimal positives to compensate.

2. Photon Wall only lasts for 3 seconds. That’s way to short and not competitive enough with Bulwark gyro 5s reflect and Toss Elixir U 12s reflect or missile break with far better cooldowns.

3. In general, the other skills are not as good compared to other engineer skills. Healing turret is still going to be meta and I’d take Elixir U over Photon Wall or Spectrum Shield any day.

4. Photon Forge wireframe skin is going to get old really fast and I imagine it’s not going to sit well with some fashioneers.

5. I’m not crazy about the heat mechanic. It’s just one more thing to worry about and stare at that heat bar instead of relaxing and enjoying the beautiful scenery and combat.

6. Sword is ok’ish, but on the surface the hammer is better. Hammer has a more reliable quickness uptime and might stacking. Sword only increases your critical chance. What they should have done instead is increase your critical hit damage by 25% and 50% based on heat level. That would make the weapon far more competitive.

I don’t often praise the work done by Anet’s krewe (deep down we all love you guys and gals), but I do want to say that I’m totally loving the new outlaw outfit. It has a lot of character to it and looks absolutely fab on my engineer. I know trench coats are sort of a love/hate relationship among the community, but know this gunslinger has your back!

The majority of people are not despots. The Internet might paint such a picture and fabricate a culture around it, but it’s just drama. GW2 has a lot of amazingly nice and understanding people. People who are fathers, mothers, retired, and loads others with cool backgrounds. When you play group content, it’s important you connect with the players. Join a guild that share similar interests to your own and join their teamspeak or discord server. Once you have a voice on the other end, it’s easier to socialize and communicate your desired profession and build type. The group will accommodate and everyone can enjoy playing the game together.

I can tell you Anet is aware of everything, even if players seem to think they don’t. Trust me, they know everything that’s going on. I can also tell you that running a large scale social gaming network is incredibly difficult. Anet relies heavily on the community, its guilds, its YouTubers, to help support their game. While most people would like a simpler system that “just works”, it’s quite difficult to address (financially, technologically, and sociologically). And so at minimum they provide the in-game tools to connect players and guilds, but rely on external support to help with coordinating and teaching the more complicated parts of their game. This isn’t meant to aggravate you, nor to segregate the community (on the contrary, it builds stronger communities), but rather its a byproduct of what’s needed from you and others in order to engage in that type of activity.

Engineers complain about turrets, but deep down we all know you’re a triple kit player just making some noise :P

As a 4½ year veteran of the engineer, I can tell you Anet has been systematically destroying turrets since GW2 launch. They’ve been trying to fix something that didn’t need fixing. At launch, we had

1. 1500 range with rifle/rocket.
2. Self repairing turrets.
3. Bleed/Burns on overcharged rifle/rocket.
4. Ability to throw turrets away from us and/or strategically place them.
5. Unlimited lifetime.

If there were any fixes to be made with turrets, it would be their base health and dps, not their mechanics. The only defense I will give Anet for their systematic degradation of our turrets, as well as our gyros, is that they want to reduce load on their servers by making our AI controlled skills less attractive.

Isn’t owning and showing a legendary more of a status symbol? The have vs the have not? :P

I don’t get bored of my predator simply because I main an engineer and well.. we don’t get to see our primary weapon very much So for me, throwing fireball barrage is a nice bonus. Or using the 10% fire rate trait with elixir U quickness for 10s to drown out everyone with my pew pew sounds. It sounds even crazier when other predators join along.

Now if Anet gave us titles for the legendaries we unlock, that would be sick. Running around as “The Predator” would be awesome.

2 legendaries man? I’m still recovering from my predator I crafted 2 years ago! If I had to get a 2nd one though, then I’d either get Shooshadoo and look badkitten strolling around WvW with a fishtank on my back, or get the HMS Divinity and join up with a fleet to unleash cannongeddon.

Can we get a free holodancer with our holosmiths?

In my crazy mind, I want to believe that ultimate is a teleporter pad beaming your mates out. Then in addition to the expansion, Anet announces they will fix turrets by allowing you to erect a single sentry that you can upgrade with your wrench. To complete the meta, Anet bestows upon us a new “Yippee ki yaa he yay kyaaah kayo!” emote to complete the profession.

10/10, would buy the expansion twice.

I don’t mind the HMS Divinity. It has its own niche that I think fits well within the GW2 universe. The cannon sounds more exciting compared to the Predator’s loud futuristic zap noise. The fire and smoke trails from the regular shot as well as the grenade barrage blow the Predator out of the water (ba-dum tshh). The fog effect might also work well with ghostly potions.

The model is a bit bulky, but Shooshadoo demonstrated that legendaries can get pretty wild in size. After all, what good is a legendary if you can’t.. show boat it Nevertheless, crafting one legendary is more than enough for me, so I’ll stick with my Predator. Though I’m surprised several people managed to craft this rifle only, like what, the same day of its release? That’s some hardcore dedicated players right there.

It’s not that hard to stack 25 vulnerability just swinging your hammer. If you take into consideration PvE is essentially a zerg fest, you have dozens of others applying vuln as well. 25 stacks of might is also quite easy to achieve with a little boon duration and quickness. Applied force is also good for both raw hammer swings as well as buffing juggernaut. You essentially get 33% quickness uptime, or 50% if you add a little boon duration. If you combine that with Elixir U, you have a lot of quickness and just rip through things. Faster vuln and might stacks.

Overall, I do agree traits need to be reworked. Every trait should be a difficult choice and tradeoff. The firearms specialization is a good example of tradeoffs at all levels and it encourages build diversity. With Scrapper, there’s clearly sub-par traits like Shocking Speed, Expert Examination, Impact Savant, and Final Salvo that are inferior compared to the alternatives. Though it wasn’t always bad. The later two traits I mentioned would be fine had Anet stuck to their original Scrapper design and allow the gyros to daze. Such as it is though, stunning and dazing is no longer a focal point for our class and so those traits should be reworked.

So after all these years, Anet gave us closure on that mysterious and freaky secret room in Caudecus’s manor with this latest LS chapter. That the comment posted by Josh Foreman on the room’s discovery and its intended purpose turned out to be true, 4 years later. Makes me wonder if Anet planned the whole story arc from the start, or if it was just an elegant way to bring back that room and use it. Nevertheless, it’s really cool for us old timers to see something old and discarded as a map break turn out to be future content

Rashy.4165:

Even Eastern Canada isn’t really immune though. Couple of years ago in Toronto, power was knocked for nearly a week… It’s not unusual for thunderstorms to knock out power or shut down public transit due to flooding.

Tell me about it. When I lived in TO, it was commonplace for brownouts once or twice a month. And the TTC? Signal failures are a way of life over there. How that city still stands is a testament that Canadians can still savage it out

ButterPeanut.9746:

My main question would be, was Monday so important that missing Monday meant missing the release day? Why wasn’t everything done a week+ ago?

Kind of hard to release/orchestrate an update when you don’t have any power If it lasted long enough, I’m sure most employees would probably have taken the day off since standing around the office doing nothing isn’t going to change much. They may adjust their schedules to come in later tonight, or simply start fresh tomorrow. This isn’t anything new, it does happen. I’ve experienced several such events, so until we have starships with warp drives and androids that strive to become more human, we’ll have to settle with our primitive technologies

I would say from my personal experience that such experiences diminish the longer you play. When I first played the game many years ago, I was captivated by the world and especially helping Krytans fight off the centaurs. I helped out citizens, did the events, wondered around towns and cities just to enjoy the scenery. I was really into it, and just loved the war against the undead. The scenery, the characters, everything was just amazing. However, once you complete the story and start venturing into farming and repeating content, I started to lose sight of what was once beautiful. Zones were nothing more than endpoints to get something.

Beyond that, there have been moments where the environment was truly captivating. The Battle for LA was ANet’s finest hour in gaming. IMO it was the single best thing they produced for GW2 and I enjoyed it a lot. A truly living world once-in-a-lifetime experience and the environment setting was perfect. Citizens relocated to the Vigil keep, red skies, burning houses, people dying, screaming, needing rescue, fighting off assault knights. It was a great experience and one that I took the time to snapshot and catalog the event. I haven’t really done that before in a game.

Following that, LS2, LS3, and LS4 have been a lot more mellow and less interesting. Zones like Dry Top and Silverwastes were more functional rather than aesthetic. Desert scenery was interesting, but not pushed enough to give me a feeling of vastness and dryness. I enjoyed Verdant Brink as I thought the level design was unique and a good introduction to the multi-layered map system. Combined with a good progression system of helping the order build up defenses and fight back Mordremoth helped keep the immersion. Auric Basin tamed that immersion, but was still beautifully designed. However, Tangled Depths and Dragon’s Stand are significantly less interesting to me. Again, more functional maps.

Since then, the only other zone I find interesting is Ember Bay. I love the mood of the sunlight, the sounds of lava and dry wind. It’s rather relaxing and I’ve spent much time just finding a quite place to sit down and take in the view.

Only Anet knows what their target date is (hopefully they have one, but a Q4 release target would be desirable as I think the game could use a defibrillator boost. LS3 hasn’t done for me what LS2 did, and LS1 was a golden year I’ll never forget (ahhh, the good old days). Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to exp2 and I don’t mind getting little tidbits here and there, even if it’s in the form of their online diary/journal posts. Just something to keep the ball rolling.

It’s all good. Gives us a reason to use the Universal Multitool Pack and the newer Divinity’s Reach Rucksack to showboat. Or if you want to go full hobo, you got the Zephyr Rucksack.

1. Do you like a more active combat with lots of skill choices and rotations?
2. Do you like ground targeting and predicting your targets path?
3. Do you like solving problems with flamethrowers, grenades, rifles, bombs, and mortars over swords, sticks, and voodoo?

If you answered yes to all of the above, then you’ll love the engineer.

1. Do you want to be loved by all?
2. Do you want to be top of the food chain?
3. Do you want a class that’s more than just purity of purpose?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then maybe an engineer is not for you

Fractals have the Fractal Avenger that will appear in lvl 70+ fractals and finish off any downed ally that can’t CC or rally in time. It adds a nice bit of tension to the fight. However, I don’t think this sort of mechanic should be thrown into the world of Tyria for existing content. It would need to be something for Anet to think about (or something else to throw into the mix) when creating new content. Or bring back mob stomps like what we had when the Tower of Nightmares was released. That was a pretty fun addition.

As for the root of the issue with defensive stats, GW2 is a combat focused game compared to your typical D&D game. You are in control of your own destiny. You can dodge, jump, run away, or fight back. You can deck yourself out with full toughness and vitality, but the game isn’t designed to let you continuously soak. Gearing that way only helps you survive a few more blows, but you still need to play by the rules. And therein lies the core of the matter. You either learn to play by the rules, or your get trampled by them.

Kite

The casual ones are the whole game’s main problem.

I think you touched on the right subject here, but haven’t yet realized it’s impossible to fix. You will always have those people that trigger all their skills at once and feel like they’re contributing. You will always have groups of people that don’t know the breakbar, or how to use reflects, or that ranger pet running wild. Fights drag on or become hopeless because people haven’t learned the mechanics of their class or the game yet.

Does that merit a change to the stats system? Nope. Letting players be more tanky will still result in the same fundamental problem. You’ll have players standing around continuing to spam their skills until the fight is over, only now they don’t die.

The best way to fight ignorance is with education. Take the time to explain to the upcoming fight with your group. Give them time to respec and learn the ins and outs. That’s the only way to make this game better for everyone and will allow Anet to continue delivering more challenging content for us to learn and adapt to.

Engineer is fine, just like all the other classes. The problem is we have one group of people who declare what is meta, another group that follows that group religiously, and then the vast majority of everyone else who doesn’t care and is playing GW2 at this very minute just to have fun.

“Noo, get outta here!? I don’t believe it!” you say.

“Yeppers! People do actually play games for fun and not competition. And boy oh boy, the engineer is a bag full of fun for all content! No piano lessons required!”

I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t complete all fractals with just 3 people. Swampland requires exactly 3 people to complete the first puzzle, so you’re good there. Higher levels of Aetherblade fractal requires accessing 4 terminals to unlock a puzzle, but it’s definitely possible to do with 3 people as long as you have condi cleanse and can quickly navigate around the electric fields (I’ve done it myself with an Engineer, so no worries). Heck, you might even be quicker than relying on a pug to navigate the electric fields as they always seem to die in that puzzle.

As others have said, just know your class and the fractal mechanics. I sometimes carried and/or solo’d bosses as some pugs don’t really know what to do (rangers typically earn the annual “wtf are you and your pet doing” award). With a group of 3 competent people, it should be easy. With 5 competent people, you would just steamroll through fractals effortlessly. So you and your 2 mates can play fractals together, then just add 2 pugs as cannon fodder if you want the extra support (FYI, you can keep an open party even when you play fractals, pugs will join in whenever).

IMO, a good composition would be 2 offense + 1 support. Something like a Revenant for boons and some offense, Warrior/Elementist for raw offense, and Chrono for quickness and alacrity. Or just all roll an Engineer and be self sufficient for any situation

Some tips:
1. Hard CC (stuns, knockback) are useful in any fractal, and are required in the Nightmare fractal. Soft CCs (chill, imob) are OK as extras, but might not be enough without hard CCs.

2. Reflection is nice to have. Some fights are made dirt easy when you reflect attacks. Mostly useful in Uncategorized Fractal, Snowblind, and Molten Boss.

3. Stealth would make doing some of the Swampland puzzle easier (Engineer, Thief, or Mesmer), but it’s not required.

Mate, English stopped making sense when it became a world language Nowadays you have to use deductive reasoning to understand what someone meant to say. In most cases, when someone yells out DPS in-game, it means stop what you’re doing and focus your attack on something. The damage you apply is assumed to be satisfactory for the objective, so it’s not to be taken literally. For example, in Underground Facility you have to lure the ice elemental boss around to each molten furnace to weaken it. There comes a point when its health is low enough that you don’t have to waste time luring it over to the next furnace. Someone will yell out “dps” and that’s a queue for everyone to stop luring and focus your attack on the ice elemental.

And of course when someone refers to DPS on the forums, they’re talking about a closed-minded version of Guild Wars 2 that has only 1 profession and nothing else matters

The only turret worth slotting 100% of the time is the healing turret. All the other turrets are useless filler skills to make the engineer look cool from a marketing perspective, but serve no viable function. They’ve been gradually nerfed over the last 4 years and will only handicap you for each one you equip. The only time I use offensive turrets is during some world boss events to tag mobs for loot while I chill-out and wait for the boss to spawn. Other than that, they’re relics of an old game that no longer exists.

Step 1
Convert rifle to an actual shotgun, like the Scrap Rifle Field Test weapon in Tangled Depths (less the overheating). That gun feels more like what the engineer should be using as a primary. In fact, if I could only have one change it would be this.

Step 2
Convert all non-kit skills into kits. Alchemy kit, gadget kit, turret kit, and gyro kit.

Step 3
Allow the engineer to only equip 2 kits, similar to the Revenant legendary powers.

Step 4
Allow the engineer to dual wield weapons.

Step 5
Tweak cooldowns and damage output of all kits and primary weapons to reflect the changes.

Celestial armor with celestial/zerk/viper(or whatever condi) accessories. Swap to whichever accessories you want to boost that particular build. I’ve been rolling that setup for years and I’m loving it. And my bank account is also loving it.

Healing amount feels the same to me, especially if everyone is using their blast finishers in the water field. The only thing I have noticed is that the turret sometimes takes significantly longer than 3/4 second to deploy. Sometimes it takes 1½ seconds before I get that heal.

Somehow this feels appropriate for the situation.

Jeknar.6184:

Most skills in this game are AoE/Cleave. It would be a complete disaster in any scenario that isn’t 1v1.

Cue the Benny Hill music.

When swapping between any two kits, your primary weapon auto attack will trigger. I personally do not expect my primary weapon skills to be activated when swapping between kits. This could also provide a competitive advantage.

Repro Steps:
1. Have auto attack enabled on any of your primary weapon skills (tested with rifle, pistols, and hammer).
2. Select grenade kit and lob a single grenade at a mob to enter combat mode.
3. Switch to any other kit after your last kit attack completes. This issue will not surface if you queue attacks or swap kits at the start of your last kits attack. Swapping between Grenade and Mortar kit is the easiest way to see the issue.

Observed Behaviour: After kit swap, your primary weapon auto attack will trigger. Hip shot, net shot, overcharged shot, rocket charge, blowtorch, etc.

The other day I saw a fellow mate get wrecked by a mob spamming projectiles at him. He was quite a distance away from me and had only a sliver of health before making peace with Grenth, so I popped protective solace and moved the tablet over to him. He was dumbfounded when I did that. He couldn’t get over the fact that he’s never been helped like that before and it got me thinking. In the year or so this profession has been out, I too can’t recall a single encounter where I’ve ever seen another Revenant use that skill. I’ve definitely seen them run around with a tablet, but even then I never see them use it, or just leave it behind in the heat of combat.

I know Ventari is not going to win you DPS awards, but its utility is undeniably effective for the right situation. As I main an engineer, I don’t have the comfort of such a barrier to protect me. I need to rely on skill and knowledge to survive (Ventari’s second tenet: Do not fear difficulty. Hard ground makes stronger roots). Nevertheless, there are some events that benefit highly from protective solace (ex: Stavemaster Adryn in Dragon’s Stand, Pyroclastic Jade in Ember’s Bay, Tequatl’s Dragon Barrage). So why not lend a helping hand?

Behellagh.1468:

Guild Wars 3: Quaggans in SPAAACE

Count me as the first to pre-order. Anet – make this happen.

Joxer.6024:

power shines on open world/trash more so than condi

Generally yes. If you have time to stack your condis and let them sit, the DoT will exceed what you output with just raw power. That’s by design of this game. If someone were to graph the DoT between power and conditions, you’ll see power starts off strong, but conditions eventually catch up and then surpass raw power. The only exception to this is that most exposed bosses only increase power damage output and not condition damage output (ex: Tequatl, HoT bosses). In those cases, power damage blows condition out of the water by a massive amount. On the flipside, certain mobs and bosses benefit more with condition damage because of their mobility (making them harder to melee or focus attack) or due to high toughness. In those cases, conditions win.

Joxer.6024:

What power build do you run with?

As far as stats go, my armor is always celestial and I swap my accessories between celestial or zerk depending on the content I’m doing. Celestial is good all-around survivability for new content, and zerk is something I use for fights I know more about and have higher survival confidence.

Here’s the template build I start with.

1. Firearms specialization, Elixir Gun, and Mortar are the only things that never change in all my builds. I consider those a staple in any engineer build.
2. Nice fluidic combo with this setup: FT Air Blast (on breakbar only), FT Napalm, Rifle 3, 4 (on breakbar only), 5 (fire aura), Elixir Gun Acid Bomb (might), FT Flame Blast (+might). If I’m with a zerg, I’ll detonate the healing turret for another stack of might.
3. FT + Bunker Down is a guaranteed spawn of mines + med kit every 2 seconds. I love when those mines stack and then lure the mob into it.
4. If I roll with grenades, I’ll replace inventions or scrapper with explosives to maximize their potential. I mainly use grenades to stack vulnerability to help move combat along faster.
5. With a zerg, survivability is typically not an issue. I may use the Firearms Modified Ammunition trait + swap Scrapper for Tools to get an additional damage boost.

In short, engineers..

1. Have good condi and power build diversity. Very good survivability due to access of stability, condi cleanse, and stun breakers.
2. Are the masters of CC, bar none.
3. Is a member of the Goonies.
4. Best long range AOE & ground targeting spam abilities (Mortar, Grenades).
5. AOE Moa Trollimorph, which is superior to the Mesmer’s single target polymorph.
6. Have higher IQ than other professions that failed in math and sciences.
7. Scarlet Briar was an engineer.
8. Best loot tagging in the game (better than guard loot stick).
9. Cheap to maintain because we don’t have legendary kits or skins to work towards.
10. Only class that can swing a wrench or pry bar at you.

Don’t have videos to show you, but like all professions you just need to play it to get a feel for it. It’s been my primary class since the beginning because I love his play style. Other classes are fun to play and have unique abilities, but when things get messy my Engineer always comes out on top.

I mostly roll with power builds because lately a lot of PvE content requires hard CC. FT + Rifle combo pretty much blows away most break bars in a single rotation when mobs are not scaled up. It’s also fun to throw trash mobs around with all that CC (I wish Anet would allow us to CC mobs off cliffs). Power also tends to scale better when mobs are exposed, dealing massive DPS compared to condition damage, which usually remains at 1x damage boost during such moments (bug?). There’s also a lot of engineer traits that synergize with power builds, whereas conditions only have 3 important traits to take from firearms, leaving the rest to whatever.

I’ll sometimes play conditions just to try something different. Burn damage alone can easily get 2x power damage when fully stacked on a mob, but it does require quite a bit of maintenance to upkeep. I tend to focus less on the beauty of the game and more on the rotations, which dulls the gameplay for me.

Finally, there’s a mix play style that I haven’t tried yet. Viper offers both condi + power (less ferocity). I don’t have a full viper set yet, but the boost to rifle net shot so that you can get up to 4 seconds of imob (@ 50% uptime) is absolute troll in WvW.

I’ve been running full celestial armor since its inception a couple years ago. It’s a solid set that fits all play styles, but more so with the engineer given that many of his skills are balanced around condi and power. Looking at armor alone, the loss in stats compared to a standard triple major/minor/minor set is also negligible. You’re losing out on 211/108/108 points, which does not really help boost your numbers that much. So the way I see it, might as well craft one set of armor and never look back.

Now as far as weapons/trinkets go, I use a combination of full celestial, zerk, or rabid/viper depending on what I want to do and what will benefit the party comp. Celestial for a balanced defence/offence, zerk for bombing zergs with mortar and orbital bombardment, and rabid/viper for smaller scale fights. In the end though, stats/pressure is only going to make or break pug fights. In 2+ scenarios, party comp and strategy will have the upper edge. I’ve been in some skirmishes to see something like an elementist focus on survivability and use that to lure the attacks, while his friends do all the damage. People who try to focus down the elementist are fighting the wrong battle and it won’t take long to realize your squad is about to get owned. Party comps and roles are always the most fun, so having a set of weapons/trinkets to fulfill a role with celestial armor to balance the equation offers me the most options.

Level 1: Rifle Turret
Wack it a few times with wrench…
Level 2: Belt-fed Twin Rifle Turret
Wack it a few times with wrench…
Level 3: Belt-fed Twin Rifle + Rocket turret

Only sneaky thieves with sappers should be allowed to take it down.

“Yippekeeyah-heeyapeeah-kayoh!”