Guild Wars 2

An Engineer specialising in explosives being the absolute weakest profession in a siege context, while thieves and warriors can do serious ranged damage to stuff on walls and walls themselves, makes perfect sense! Oh, wait…

Not only it makes very little difference what you pick, all the storylines also feel almost identical as you always see the lot, and you just happen to peep up in different parts of the dialogues for some relevant bits.

Only a couple missions in the middle are legitimately different in feeling between them.

Storyline will go away pretty quick, pick based on the armor you like best IMO.
I picked Priory because it felt the more appropriate, and now I regret it because the armor set isn’t one I like.

If they added “gains stability for 0.5s every hit” it would only work when using flamejet against an opponent, which would make sense and address one of the FT’s weaknesses (range), not OP the trait, and require no other parts of it nerfed.

I agree with the general idea of bringing it back but not making it permastable. I didn’t like the movment speed reduction either to be honest, although it was necessary because of the huge pvp value of stability, so this would be a happy middle ground IMO.

Grenades are probably the highest in pure dps you can go, but it doesn’t mean it’s the only thing you can play.
In PvE and casual PvP condition based dual pistol with EG support is actually viable. Just don’t expect to be top dps or for it work in more competitive PvP scenarios, but it’s still functional and fun to play.

Graywolf.6513:

Though think about it, if you were working with corrosive materials, fire, or anything dangerous, you would want to wear something pretty overall protective, a trench coat is thick and protective, and does not have gaps in the armor for that acid to run down., also won’t soak up the acid.

The very last thing you do when you work around heavy machinery, revolving turrets, flamable liquids and things that might require you run away like the wind before something explodes, is exactly, precisely… wearing a trench coat
People wearing flared long sleeves around exposed gears don’t keep their hands for long, thos wearing long coat tails of sturdy materials usually aren’t around to tell the tale at all (most of them die the first time they turn around suddenly by said gears).

That said, I don’t care, the engineer is clearly meant more as a gunslinger with kits in AN’s art direction than anything else,I agree with you there and I like that, and Orr’s karma gear looks the part. Now on to farm me 250k and spare change of it -_-

The engineer is a lab chemical engineer, which needs alchemy for the contents of things that go boom, and mechanical knowledge for such things to be lobbed in the enemy’s general direction.

Since all classes in the game have healing, support and control rolled into them, they expanded on those a bit with the self buffing and so on through the alchemic traits.

It’s no more stretched than the warrior also being a proficient archer/sniper (more so than we are), The guardian being both a paladin and a cleric, the mesmer being both an illusionist and a psyonic, the elementalist being both a classic mage and a more priesty one in the water parts and so on.

The duality to a lot of the professions (only the thief feels really cohesive and unequivocal to me) comes from the fact they didn’t want pure support or pure healing classes, so a lot of things normally only support-y or dps-y had to be stretched more than a bit to cover things the stereotype would normally place outside that specific domain.

I think you are spending too much time in the lab
The engineer is simply the gimmicky class of the game, much like shamans were in wow, and as such must have been hard to balance and features some rather unique mechanics more frequently than other professions, and that shows through in the bugs and all.

I don’t think or feel it was a hasty merge of two classes, it’s just a naturally very difficult idea to design by the same standards of some other professions.

It’s a fun class, but one has to accept that it will always be gimmicky and somewhat confused because of it. The upside, or to some the downside, is that it tends to have multiple wildly different playstyles and specs that are sort of viable, with no clear king of the hill spec for any given task.

It’s just the buggiest in the game right now, at least of those I tried, and it’s not evident until you play another to sufficient extent and then go back how seriously it is, and how frustrating that can be (amazing what kind of pain and glitchyness we players can get used to if we tunnel on the same profession for too long ).

Even if they fix the obstruction issues, it will still have all the path prediction and lag issues related to slow projectile skills in this game that you have no control over other than firing at a target.

Currently it’s nowhere near high skill, you just stay at max range for jet, take literally two animation steps back at the end of jet, fire it off, and walk two steps back in. How is that more skill than detonating it at the right moment? I feel it’s the other way around.

In a game that has so many knockbacks, locator/marker based damage rather than just filtered target based like every other game, given the necessary path prediction it needs a mechanic change to become satisfactory, or don’t expect to ever see a #3 + #2 combo working well, and expect to see it freaking out on every jumping/charging/dashing mob in the game forever, the way it does now.

If it just went for whatever you have targeted and explode on impact, it’d become just a button you HAVE TO press every time the CD is up to do ideal dps. AN doesn’t seem too fond of this model from everything I’ve seen and they seem to prefer synergistic/situational approaches and moving away from rotations in favour of multistate abilities you have to put some effort into (cast + activation and so on).

I don’t think they’d do what you suggest, and honestly wouldn’t want them to. An option to detonate it or auto detonate at max distance would mean some thoughts beyond just pressing it every few seconds would have to go into it, either for detonating or to find the perfect range before shooting it, and I like that about GW2’s playstyle a lot, and hope AN stick to their guns in those regards.

I get a fair chunk of aggro if I use the condition-y, CC nades. Insane aggro some times.
I have kited large groups of mobs or bosses for MINUTES while doing less damage than my group was doing to them (since they could turret) when I was nade kiting.

I hardly ever get much when I go FT even if I focus hard a single mob while the group takes care of another, and my damage is comparable.

I’ve given up trying to figure out the exact aggro parameters in the game. Number of separate hits (not accumulated like the FT) and CC seem to have very high weight though, much more than proximity or overall damage.

FT is good AoE if you can go in, or you air blast away from someone meleeing and then run in, blind and spray, but very often by the time you get in range there’s only half the mobs left to tag.

Nades if you target on mouse pointer are actually great at tagging, you do need to predict mobs movement a bit.

Pistols though, if the mobs are clumped, will simply tag like crazy, but will be kinda meh if the mobs are spread (in which case just sit down and cry as you see a staff mesmer bouncing all kind of fabulous sparkles on every single mob in a five miles radius).

You picked my main, and my new (on par with engi) favourite class.
They are both intricate, gimmicky, fun classes to play with a full bag of tricks. They also play radically different from each other.

I seriously suggest you try both to 30 before you discount one for the other.

In PvE Mesmer is probably better accepted in the better groups in PvE (the ones that don’t just pug the first person whispering), as they are phenomenal group value for skipping mobs and synergising with guardians, but I haven’t yet been turned down when playing my engi.

PvP I wouldn’t know, haven’t done much on either.

Yes to excessively obstructed flame blasts, and even rifle sometimes depending on terrain (adamantium grass around blossoms in TA, I’m looking at you!).
Yes to bad pathing routine on flame blast.

Excessive missing of flame jet I’m torn on.
I have learnt to turn and navigate so that I can land all or almost all of it most of the time, and at this point I always unfailingly land the last couple ticks, at least I get the burn.
I like how that feels engaging and has some skill requirements (artificially and delusionally so:) ).
BUT, it requires I often turn too much and means I have to backpedal, greatly reducing kiting effectiveness. As someone who used to play ESF movement with no backpedalling or turning (pure forward + strafe) in competitive pvp before, the illusion of skill requirements of above is completely negated by having to move like a noob for close to 100% uptime.

Better pathing + detonate blast, and a slightly wider cone that is 100% camera dependent for jet, and I would have literally NO issues with FT, a kit I love.

Few metres more range on jet so it’s on par with blast would be welcome, or a slight up in damage at the current range, would be nice, but lack thereof is not something that takes me out of the flow as much as blasts bugging out half the times or having to backpedal a couple steps.

However, I’ve also noticed that it completely fails 25% of the time.
And 75% of that, is straight after using air blast.

This is absurd. One of the main synergies of air blast is to create enough distance for the flame blast. Yet it constantly fails.

I have a feeling that if flame blast was closer to a 100% success rate, then the problems of the engineer would be lessened.

Yeah, it’s beyond annoying.
It’s been discussed to all hell and it’s confirmed.

What it boils down to (this is semi-educated guesswork) is that like all permanently connected games GW2 needs to do a minimum of path prediction, or it’d be unplayable on any ping higher than a handful of milliseconds. There is also, often, a small discrepancy between animations and where the actual mob marker is positioned, while the animation is happening.

What this means is that when you hit airblast, the mob marker has either moved (internally, not the animation) so fast (because it teleported) between the two spots that the engine’s prediction places it a mile away from the blast and makes it fail, or it’s delayed, and mob is thought to still be at your feet, and therefore the blast lands on nothing.

From testing and looking at other knockbacks where I was at higher than my #3 range, I’m inclined to say it’s the former, because the blast always just “fails” and disappears, instead of travelling to the pre-knock position of the mob.

It is far from a trivial problem to solve at an engine level, the routines used for these games need all sort of interpolations, heuristics and tricks to give the impression of fluidity despite the fact you always have lag well in excess of your event loops, it’s not AN’s shortcoming that they have to use those tricks, they are axiomatic to writing an MMO.

What is at fault, IMO, is the design of #2. As it’s been suggested many times ALL its problems would go away if it was a double tap ability that could be detonated, or simply got its direction from the target, but always went the full distance parallel to the ground and exploded at the end of travel time. Or ideally both (decent pathing + detonate at will + detonate at max distance travelled if not manually detonated).

Other way around. Anything that builds stacks on kills requires you have the weapon equipped when the mob dies.
Sigil of Luck, as I have it, is the same of all the other on-kill sigils.

I don’t remember if you need to land the actual killing shot with the weapon, or just as long as it’s your damage, or if it’s enough that you had tagged the mob, tempted to say the second, but don’t quote me on it, but I know from personal testing that you won’t get the stack unless the weapon is equipped on death.

You do preserve the bonus while kitting up though, at least.

A “public IP address ban”, given most network infrastructures, would remove a good chunk of potential connections from a large number of blocks in the area set to cycle that range. What rubbish :p

Sinikka, you’ll be fine, EULAs like AN have no implications on tying a hardware platform to a specific account.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about in regards to going through tricky places, not to mention already at low levels you can leave a trail of clones for the mobs to get angry at and get well past reset range.
It’s great to have a mesmer or two in groups when you’re trying to skip mobs in dungeons actually, but that probably doesn’t apply here if OP wants to solo only.

Swiftness though I sorely miss. With no particular build requirements on my engi I can get 80-100% uptime swiftness with medkit + elixirs (the 100% is if you get lucky a couple times with the random buff on elixir toss), and if your build can take speedy kits then you can have a guaranteed 100% by doing the same and simply kitswap a couple times when you don’t get lucky with the toss.

Warrior you can have permaswiftness in a viable setup with signet of rage.

Something that might be worth mentioning, is that Mesmer is, IMO, a fairly tricky class, BUT the mesmer guide sticky in the mesmer forums is soooo good, and no other class I researched out there has such a resource, that it might actually make it a viable choice for you as it’d be at the very least the easiest to learn to play at a decent level.

The guy who did that guide did such a good job I started playing a mesmer alt a bit after watching it, and I’m enjoying it (other than all the butterfly, glass and sparkles, you have to be ready to be fabulous to play one).

It’s not “easy” IMO, as it’s a profession wih a full bag of tricks and it has a build-up necessary for certain situations, but it’s definitely one that can consistently and easily create very rewarding plays once you get the hang of it, and in a pinch and to get past some of the trickier areas without touching a single mob (for map completion) it’s up there.

You can easily prep and then chain up so much going into a fight that you can have a champion distracted for long enough to nick their chest. If it had a viable permaswiftness it’d probably be the best exploration class out there, sadly you can at best hit 50% uptime.

You still haven’t given any advice other than “it should wear medium armor” :p

You say you played a warrior, again, but you seemed to not even know they are viable at range with all the “melee hate” posts.

I also don’t see any weener measuring, but it’s player helping players here, and you were definitely not helping with random “balance” non-sense, hence why I didn’t drop it at first post. And now I’ll be out of here, be well.

How many champions do you actually need to solo going for map completion? I can think of only one or two that would routinely get in the way, and they have no melee hate.

Besides, you do realize that warriors have an extremely viable rifle build, right? You insist on balance (OP never mentioned it), and post like warriors can only play melee, but the former isn’t at issue here, and the latter is simply false.

Have you actually played a warrior past level 10 before? They aren’t rangers, but they are far from being restricted to melee. In fact I wish I had the warrior rifle abilities on my engineer (and my rifle/FT/EG engi is my main).

Sorry man, but it seems you’re just not letting go of an argument for the sake of having it, when insofar you have posted only vague non-sense about balance, and have yet to suggest a class and a reason why to the OP.

Netglen.7826:

While I was testing out some sigils, I noticed ones like “Sigil of Bloodlust” only gave kill counters while I was using rifle instead of grenades. Am I just using the wrong type of sigils or do I need to rack up 25 kills first with my rifle and then switch to the grenade kit?

Yep, that’s how it works.
No stats or sigils have any effect whatsoever from main weapon when you have a kit on.
You have to switch to the rifle for the killing shot (or at least for the moment the mob dies to something) to get any of the sigil based stacks. At least they don’t get wiped when you go back to the kit.

I rock thoughness/vit rifles with bloodlust exactly for that reason, because that way at least it has some use when it’s out (I will be controlling/surviving/kiting if my rifle is out instead of FT or nades), and build a few stacks on the easiest mobs I can find before going onto the main farming targets I set out for.

I didn’t make it a fight between professions at all, I’m not even particularly fond of playing warrior, but the OP didn’t ask about a balanced class at all, he asked about what class to solo PvE, and outside of dungeons and to get map completion there is hardly any of the melee hate you mention, that is only and exclusively in some dungeons.

I don’t know where you got this idea of balance from his post honestly, all he clearly asked for is what’s the easiest to get map and story completion with, and warrior is just that hands down. Permaswiftness is a big deal too when you’re going for map, and warrior and engi have some of the longest/easiest peramswfiftness in the game.

Depends on the class, traits, PvP vs PvE, and most importantly, what you want to play :p

I play my engi in PvE power/prec/thoughness because I don’t like being too squishy, but my warrior in PvE is so hardy I hardly need anything but piling up damage stats.

Most PvP glass cannons might be fun gimmicks to play, but you will die, a lot, but gear in PvP is a different thing.

I disagree with this distinction by armor, and find it mostly disconnected non-sense.

In solo PvE thieves are medium armor and squishy as, unless you use all your skills appropriately you will get twoshot a lot soloing most veterans that can cc frequently in the levelling curve.

Engis are definitely not high damage nor very surviv-y early on and with random gear.

Only ranger more or less qualifies as what you point out.

Warriors dish out a stupid amount of punishment and are sturdy, able to do range and melee equally well, and versatile.

Basically you described guardians VS ranger (and guardians on protracted fights actually average out to very respectable dps), and generalised it to the armor category.

@OP Warrior and Guardian IMO. Non-squishy and can deal with any mob, other “classes” tend all to have a weak point here and there in particular situations, those not as much. That said, any profession in the game can comfortably solo it way 1-80, get map completion and farm efficiently, so pick something you’ll like to play.

Warrior is probably the one you can go the furthest with efficiently, with the least amount of changes through the levels and “skills” to learn.

It can be played better than that, of course, but compared to how much you need to learn for a mesmer, engineer or thief to just go through the 15-35 stretch without frustration, it’s arguably the easiest.

Warrior can be in your face melee using just three or four skills and a heal and no weapon swapping and still make it through an area two levels higher.
It’s not as much about skill cap though which can be high up on all classes, especially in PvP, it’s more entry level skill requirments you’re talking about.

Given the game is partially predicated on the downed state not being the end of it, but a state you ARE supposed to occasionally enter and recover from as part of the game mechanics, the fact that you pull MORE aggro (seemingly) when downed might mean the mobs are “being smart”, yes,but it doesn’t make it good AI or good design.

If the mobs were really smart, then they would just all wait for you at the entrance and maul you stupid the instant you enter chaining THEIR cooldowns. But it’s a game, you don’t want the odds to be impossible, you want the whole extent of the playing experience to be challenging and enjoyable.

Good AI coupled with good design is AI that provides a varying challenge without feeling monotonous or exploitable, but can still be overcome in such a way you get a kick out of playing.
When the AI is clearly dumb as a brick 90% of the time, but the one time it can be frustratingly stubborn it suddenly switches to inflicting you a fatality, that’s not a smart AI, it’s bad design.

If the downed state was something you weren’t supposed to get out of except one random 1% of the time, and something that is just random and frustrating, then they might as well replace it with a roll of the dice to see if you got a fatal hit or not.

As it is, aggro often has some serious issues in the game, and no clear mechanics that you can play to and skillfully exploit within the rules. Saying it’s not broken (it’s not, but it’s flawed) because you’re not supposed to go down at all is flying in the face of every official statement ever made by AN, so spare it, please

After having done a few stories and quite a few explorables, I have to say I think the model has merit, and it could be a lot of fun, but the liberty and autonomy of each member has made it so that everybody plays for themselves, and team mechanics are almost completely ignored.

When you see some good plays and timing, they are always individual plays. Things that require explicit teamwork are hardly ever seen in PUGs, and even in organised runs.

The classic roles trinity isn’t superior or inferior to GW2’s IMO, BUT the old one was explicitly split, and gave everybody a specific task to do, and something you could “train” for and become better at. In this game I still have to see people shouting something “LFG whatever exp path2, good support build”.
It’s always every man for himself and everybody tries to dps and does nothing else.

There’s still a triplet of skills in this game, but everybody has to bring a chunk of each to the dungeon. Right now it’s like if in another MMO you were trying to run an instance with 5 hybrids but all specced and playing dps. Of course it’d play horrible and feel like the design is wrong, your play would be missing a fundamental part of the requisites run that sub-game.

Groups wipe like mad on knights in TA, but when you really look at it there’s only two things to it: Their channelled slam, and the blossoms.
If you have one person that can effectively cleanse himself in charge of staying at a distance and clearing blossoms (God forbid you have a rifle though, on account of the impenetrable grass surrounding half of them), and people routinely use interrupts, immobilizes, snares and push backs on the knights, you can EASILY roll the three knights pull. But people don’t, and as soon as a knight starts handing you your behind because you ran out of dodge, everybody gets the heck out quick, when all it’d take would be someone blinding or using a daze or a pushback and you could comfortably survive those slams, and move on to being the one negating the next.

Every time I swap kits and traits around to do these things on the pulls I’ve found how to counter, I notice my groups always get at least one or two of the mobs down instead of multiple full resets. If only another person does the same thing, those pulls always go well. But because nobody else usually does, the game feels more random and frustrating than it really is, when in actuality the design is quite good, simple, and at times even clever.

When you get ONE run with everybody on teamspeak and people who play alts of each other’s class, and you see good synergy, then you understand what this game is really about IMO. Then you go back to uncoordinated PUGged runs, and you want to just off yourself.

TL;DR: the model is good, the dungeons are fun with a good group, but it really doesn’t seem to be catching on how it’s played to effectively, and I have no hope that it will get any better in the future given that you can still painfully crawl your way through it with multiple WP zergs and much pain, and everybody playing for themselves.

Some more mechanics where it’d be mandatory to use skills of a certain type well wouldn’t go amiss though. It’s all kite and spank right now.

The problem is with not having anything educating people on how to coordinate. There’s hardly any need for it, the whole game almost rewards zerging for the sake of not introducing complete skill/coordination walls, when it should teach and promote finesse, and punish zerging.

I definitely don’t want to see the encounters shutting doors behind the player and removing WPs, in fact I want more WPs (one per boss) through the dungeons, and bosses that can be taken to any room with their mechanics changing or still working, so that different strats all present variety and challenge, and not exploits.

There’s only three ways to make money, in general.

Gather things worth selling, first tier money making.

Process things into other things of value greater than the sum of the parts (you’ll have to watch the market a bit for that), which can follow the first or be played out purchasing mats for faster turnaround of smaller gain but higher risks.

Play the metagame of virtual value, but it requires capital and it’s not for everybody. You seem to think it’s not for you, but it’s not too bad when you get into it, so maybe give it a shot anyway. Unless you already did and really dislike it. It’s not for everybody.

The first option is the only way you seem to be willing to deal with, and that means find good farming spots, ideally a decent farming group, look at how the market fares for things you know you can farm efficiently, and go farm it.
You could consider getting a farming set with MF and use MF food to optimise it, and do a bit of research into how you can combine things into greater value again (mystic forge material upgrades etc).

Works like that in real life too since the late 70s

Diminishing Returns, as Setch mentioned.
Occasionally used as Damage Reduction too, but that’s mostly something carried over by wow players, in GW2 I almost exclusively hear it as the former.

Call Nuclear Strike:
Calls in a zone wide A2G nuclear strike that kills every player and mob on the map, friendly or not, indiscriminately, and leaves it heavily radiation poisoned so only an engineer with a bunny-suit kit can go loot the lot.

In PvE or PvP?
I originally made my engi hoping it would have been a bunkering, king of the hill class with ground set-up and hold through turrets, at least in PvE.

I quickly found out in PvE they get lolstomped by big mobs even fully traited, and will pull all hell on you (and die quickitteno leave your underpowered build to deal with 4 mobs) on trash/world.

In PvP some people make it work.

I’d love to play turret heavy, and I’ve given it more than a chance, but it’s not doing it for me. Not pure turrets at least, there’s just not enough control of your surroundings and they’re just too squishy even after you invest heavily in them and kitten your damage-y traits. I do like the net one for specific situations though, but it only synergises well with a control heavy rifle build.

After some tweaking around back and forth, I came to a build very similar to the one Faction posted.
For PvE go for that with Power > Precision as main stats, and you will be solid.
I do disagree with eliU and with rifle being garbage, in team play there are times where rifle (only decent finishers and good long range control) will be important. Learn to mix appropriately, but damage will be all FT.

It’s fun, effective, and can be re-configured for various encounters easily enough. Be ready to swap a couple things based on encounters (you will need to handle conditions a lot in some places so medikit instead of eliH and Elixir C available, grenades instead of FT for heavy cond damage + kiting, grenades and FT for kiting to boss with no conds and so on).

It also does very well with nades and EG for those swaps, which makes it very versatile.

I am starting to grow very fond of healing kit instead of EliH though, and I definitely don’t like elixir U much unless it’s medikit + EU + shoes for map achis/travel if you’re not traited for speedy kits.

I also, some times, swap between crate and stability aspect, since in some places crate just gets one shot AoEd and knockbacks can get you rolled in a second (half of TA if you skip trash).

On flat terrain with no textured planes or invisible walls it’s perfectly fine. The same night I was going insane in TA I did two paths of CM explore and not one shot in the indoor areas had any issues. And funnily enough, you can blast half the stuff in rooms from a cozy camp outside the room’s walls there.

I don’t know how people can say they never get obstruction issues with #2, anywhere that isn’t completely flat ground every other shot or more for me gets obstructed.

Shot pathing is -definitely- messed up, and it’s not an exageration to say it can become useless. On rough terrain with textured planes you can find large patches of the map where you literally can’t use it for anything.

Rifle isn’t unaffected either, ever tried killing blossoms in TA explore with it? About half of them are, apparently, surrounded by the toughest grass on the planet, grass thick enough to stop a bullet (and this happens to rifle warriors too, was the case just yesterday). Bows, however, are unaffected on exactly the same path for the shot.

Can’t count the amount of times I have to switch to grenades purely due to LoS/obstruction issues in my normal day2day playing.
There is a problem, and it’s up there with the silly #1 targeting issues.

Given I like to run rifle/FT/EG in pve, I probably spend half the time cursing at the bugs and having to over-kite or switch to non-ideal kits for entire areas.

Rick.1378:

Hmm, still no grenade auto attack, and bombs autoattack is still broken, it says it’s enabled but it doesn’t auto attack. Looking at flamethrower that’s not auto attacking either. It might be user error, am I doing something wrong? I have auto attack enabled as viewed in the tooltip when I mouse over ability 1, but when I hit 1 it just fires the weapon once until I press 1 again.

Autoattack stops when attacks don’t land. This means OOR FT and unexploded mines will stop autoattacking. This is true for normal weapons too, just the peculiarities of those two kits make the mechanic more obvious.
Tested both and they work fine within those constraints.

I was looking forward to the FT autoattack, but given you practically HAVE TO be at max range, I find I can’t rely on it and still find myself pressing 1 regularly or setting the macro key to autopress (depending on what keyboard I use).

Grenades, as pointed out, can’t autoattack as they are ground targeted, and target AoE on cursor is a client option, so it can’t be required to be on to trigger autofire, and if it was always on you would get this constant AoE reticule up (which admittedly might be cool as you could autofire and click your grenade pathing).

Macro/autofire capable keyboard still a must for engi in my case.

Sigils, with an ICD for balance reasons on swappy ones, and weapon stats coming through are second to next on my list, #2 FT obstruction issues are my top one, when a blade of grass while shooting downhill literally wastes you a cast and still triggers the CD much pain and rage ensues.

For what it’s worth, when I was experiencing the bug and venting in guild, a bunch of people me-tooed, and they were ALL other engineers and two mesmers, so all classes that I would assume have some differences in the weapon swapping routines.

I’m so going on a GW2 farming binge on my engi tonight…

raykor.6723:

Engineer here, tried this quest three times and it will not complete. I cannot advance my story.

You can actually, see workaround posted in this thread.
Get to the edge of the water, intetionally drop sword very close to transition point, step out of water until walking animation kicks in, you should still be in range of the item to pick it up. Pick up, move 10 yards inland, quest completes properly.

It’s a bummer, but it only adds a minute of inching by until you find the correct point where animation switches, and then you can drop and pick up the item around there.
I got it done like that.

So FT now autoattacks? Can’t play and check myself right now, please tell me it does!

All in all I think the people struggling don’t realize four or five important rules:
1) Two or three mobs at a time make no difference damage wise witha rifle/FT/grenade setup. If your positioning is good you will damage all by the same amount at the same time, you only take more damage, which can be taken care of by well timed pushes and blinds and alternating cc between the targets as your shots deal damage to all.

2) Elixir ON CD. Buff early, buff as soon as they’re up, and heal soon. When solo world PvEing don’t save them for special occasions, high uptime beats coordinating them with a big shot by a long stretch. We have nothing usable quickly and solo that does so much more damage that they are worth syncing.

3) You CAN take on multiple mobs even without toughness or vitality if you position them well, your smoke will blind anything wacking on you even midcast without resetting your cast.

4) Knowing the mobs and switching one or two things (FT with grenades and shoes with condition removal) to have an appropriate skill for the encounter only takes a second, and will make a specific mob type tenfold easier or harder.

5) You have toolbelt skills, USE THEM.
F1 and F2 on CD will buff you too, they aren’t for group use only. Down by a sliver or hp? F1. F2 in your path while moving and not doing significant damage will get you a buff. Even if already buffed, use it, they stack.
Moving and using the FT? Use that F3 so you will apply burns as well.
Engineer doesn’t have 8k single shot damaging skills, but you can add up a lot of stuff while being mobile.

It will be a lot more fun and feel a lot more involved and technical once you get the hang of those, and right now, some annoying bugs aside, I feel it’s the profession I like playing the best when soloing areas, it’s got such a good flow and it’s 100% in your control, without having to wait for a 5th hit or preparing the ground for each fight, while constantly moving through the area.
Give it a fair shot, you might end up liking it.

All of the above going down firearms, then alchemy, then explosives, and only applies to PvE FT with secondary Grenades kit for clump kiting.

Wall of text incoming, 4 points TLDR the following post:

I felt the same way initially, with the class being squishier in solo play than it should be, but it turned out it was just how I played it and me not really liking the builds I was trying and therefore playing them poorly.

In the 30-60 stretch, with a FT/rifle condition build and cheapo gear from quests/drops and sub 1s TP purchases I was able to do well in dungeons and solo picking up multiple mobs (upwards of 4 or 5 when going through tunnels) and soloing veterans and a couple of champions.
The only real issue tends to be with 3 or more high dps ranged mobs, at which point my squishyness made it too close a call more often than not.

Because of doing story and crafting regularly I was usually doing renown and story a couple levels above mine, never below, and again had no issue.

One on one, if you’re not in a hurry, you can’t be touched.
Melee mobs you just snare and pepper with the rifle backpedalling if you have the space. Ranged mobs you use FT up to a couple at a time you just go close in and personal so that #3 and #5 will affect both.

It really isn’t that hard, you just got to get used to using your elixirs on CD and swap kits appropriately.

Melee 1v1: rifle #1, net as soon as it’s done casting, couple shots land, backpedal until they are a third of your range away, #3 (will hit when they are by you), #4, keep shooting, they will be dead before they reach you again. If they are veterans, have gap closers, or are three levels above, net again when it’s off CD (it will be at that point) and rinse and repeat.

Melee 1v2:Same as above, but move more keep them lined up, pepper the one not netted (rifle pierces), then #4 the one closing in, and you might need to dodge once or twice.
Switch to FT and #3 and/or #5 when they are both close and spray them.

Learn what your damage is and when the mobs will die, you can easily take a hit or two, so taking a couple hits as you finish them with FT is fine and better than kiting your way into another pack.

Buff yourself constantly as it’s off CD, don’t worry about saving it or maximising it, and make sure you switch between oil and condition removal before engaging depending on what mob you’re about to go against.

Melee 3v1: This is where oil and grenades are insanely good, but oil and FT is just fine too.
Kite them in circle and when they are clumped around you #5 with your FT then backpedal trailing oil, use that to get some distance, FT will damage all three at the same time.
Or if you feel like grenades you can kite at full speed (and not reduced backpedalling or messy strifing), oil them and leave trails of snares and aoe and with autotarget just spam grenades at your feet while circle kiting.

I’ve taken care of literally ALL the spiders on the second champion in TA this way with mediocre pugs that took ages to dps the boss, this means kiting and killing 4 to 12 mobs at a time.

Range 1v1: You can easily dps race any range up to three levels above with just one interrupt and one smoke.
If the area is crowded or they are high damage and have no melee range cc abilities: go close and personal with FT, learn to interrupt with #3 (don’t waste it for range), and as soon as you do follow it with a #2, then close the gap again and smoke their first big hitting ability you can’t interrupt.

Use your heal AS SOON as you’re down by the amount it heals, don’t wait ’til almost dead, it also gives you a boon.

range 1v2: if they are close, same as above, just move so you flame both at the same time, then move inbetween for the blinds, you will dps race both just fine up to a couple levels above.

range 1v3: this gets hairy, and you will have to kit swap and try to outrange one after netting it and cc/interrupt/push the rest.

If it’s a crowded area or you risk kiting into hard respawns, avoid engaging, or use your elite crate on one, stand in the circle, and try to damage two at a time and position yourself accordingly. Be ready to vacate the premises fast though, because your turrets will attack respawns or newcomers indiscriminately and get you mauled by packs in the dozens.

AppleHack.7340:

When i fought the engineer he got back up instantly i had not time to attack him again with my axe. (Necromancer)

It’s definitely not instant. If you got downed by literally a sliver of health and it happens on the tick, then yeah, you will pop up instantly, so if you only saw it once, it might have been that. If you keep seeing it though, then there might be a bug, but if there is one it’s not largely known of.

And I seriously doubt you would be banned for doing it yourself, it’s not even a creative use of the mechanics it’s a fair use of them, it’s impossible to track (not that they would anyway), and it’s been stated before it’s ok to do it as it’s seldom effective and has a big slot trade-off, not to mention situational and skill requirements (and more than a bit of luck).

AppleHack.7340:

They too are giving a “valueable” skill slot (i’m assuming you meant to say that) for that spell.

I assume he actually did mean “valuable”, which is the correct spelling for the adjectivation of “value”. Valuaeable without truncating the last vowel doesn’t exist in the English dictionary, I believe. “Slow” was obviously meant to be slot, but you seemed to catch up on that

If you decide to be a grammar nazi and condescend to people giving you answers you’d better, at least, know the proper spelling of the words you’re being pedantic about

And given our skillset and pvp tools, elixir R is a very valuable slot to give up indeed for what it does, and usually means you have to either narrow your kits (vertical drop in survivability or cc, or both), or give up condition removal (and be stomped by half the professions out there as we’re already very weak against conditions/kiting).

@Skolops thank you, thank you, thank you!
I was being driven insane by the sword bug, and your workaround of dropping the sword while swimming but in land pickup area worked first go!
For what it’s worth: Also an engineer, and getting bugs that I simply don’t get on my guardian.

I’m a FT fanatic, and I actually don’t mind #4. It’s ok as a field and for fun when you have packs and you kite them through. Not bad for farming by the guards either and getting many mobs tagged quickly, but yeah, not exactly a great dps skill even comboed.

Blind on #5 is perfectly fine, although a couple more yards range would be welcome. Given how key it is to turreting I can’t see how one would call it useless.

The things that really need fixing are #1 targeting and how narrow the cone is, as it can be a pain when kiting (and we need to kite so often when solo), and yeah, #2’s bounding box getting it obstructed so darn often when rifle shots can take the same exact path just fine is infuriating.
#2 detonating for single target high damage on impact, or for high AoE on a well timed second press, would make it super sweet and a lot more fun, as is it can be very frustrating when you can’t just turret something in a dungeon.

I would also like #3 to combo with fields actually, would make #4 more useful if I could turn it into an AoE burn with #3 instead of doing the mobs the courtesy of taking them out of damage feilds myself.

All in all FT is fun IMO, and does ok single target damage, and good to very good in AoE situations. The targeting bugs can be exceedingly frustrating though.

Regarding the “kill more get the same”, it’s also worth noting that apparently there’s a loot wall per area.
Anywhere between 50 and 100 mobs, or a combination of mobs and time, you simply stop getting gear in the drops.

This hasn’t been admitted to or confirmed by AN AFAIK, but pretty much any serious guild with coordinated farming sessions has found out that much at some point, Tales of Tyria podcast #48 actually has an interesting discussion about it. That makes MF more valuable if you don’t intend to zone swap frequently when farming.
This was the case until before the last patch, I have no idea if it was changed, but I’d be surprised if that was the case.

Also MF increases the chance to find more rare loot drops, WHEN you roll a drop that can be quality. This means you don’t get twice the items with 100%MF, you get the same number of items, but more will be quality items at the expense of less whites, which is what you’re talking about.

“You don’t get conditions in PvE” is simply untrue. You don’t get conditions, or conditions harmful enough to bother with, when you farm selected mobs, but PvE in general you do need condition removal, unless you’re lucky with group comp and players.

Already at your first instance you will get deadly conditions that you HAVE TO get rid of if you want any hope to survive (IE: non cheesed twins in AC), unless you’re very, very skilled and selectively grouped, more skilled than this build and your first instance normally would warrant, for sure.

I appreciate the effort and the sharing, it’s a big write up and must have taken time, but I have to agree with those saying it’s rubbish.
If you literally want to turret things from the distance without moving, then re-roll a ranger. An engi without kits is absolutely pointless IMO. It’s not a good, simple introduction to the class, it’s just a waste of a character slot when you could have a lot more fun with an ele or ranger if you want a narrow selection of ranged skills to be effective.

Or if you want non-overwhelming, high dps, simple to play spec just go for a self-buffing grenade spam, for farming trash (which is all that is entailed if we state condition removal is irrelevant), it’s going to be a lot more effective than kit-less P/P.

So, grenades are barely on par with other classes one button “specs”, and pistols are rather boring and ineffective, therefore grenades should be nerfed useless?
/mindboggled.

If anything we should ask for a less spammy but autoattacking grenade with more and more interesting weapon woven in, buff the weapons and their synergy with our kits, don’t nerf the kits stupid, it makes no sense.

You have other specs that are a lot more involved if you don’t find grenades fun, try one of them.

Underwater is another thing, they are clearly OP compared to other classes, but again, that doesn’t mean they need nerfing, it means other classes (especially mesmers) need an underwater buff IMO.

if you are there, and you’re not using a bot or some other out of client device to automate things, you’re not bannable, you’re just farming by the guards, which is perfectly legit (if they didn’t want you to they’d just make it so that a guard kill wasn’t lootable).

What isn’t allowed is you being AFK while something in game or not piles up resources for you, because that’s imbalancing in their view of things, but that’s why they will first contact you and ask if you’re there, if you reply and show you’re not AFK, you’ll be perfectly fine, even if the mob was tagged by your turret without a single shot from your rifle (because maybe you were hitting another mob and didn’t get to that one).

If you can get 100% MF for the same budget of +25% dmg, you’re still better off with MF when farming, because statistically your chances doubled instead of going up only a quarter for the same item budget.

On top of that, given you won’t be able to chain up mobs that have a higher drop rate for the better items because of their unicity (champions etc.), making the best of those spikes is worth a lot more than killing trashy common packs faster, as the frequency of spikes is unchanged regardless of your dps.

MF has some worth over other things for a farming set because it costs less than damage required to kill a proportionally larger amount of mobs with no MF, and is even better because the high yield spiked in the farming curve are near constant regardless of damage.

Whether it actually DOES have an effect, or is bugged, or just doesn’t work that way, I don’t know because I’ve never tested it and am not at level cap anyway :p

Maybe they fixed/changed some bounding boxes for mobs or playable races and it’s had the unintended consequence of getting the odd intersection to centre that “pushes” a mob?
Is this on an Asura? I think they recently saw some tweaks.