Guild Wars 2

I run power shoes like 90% of the time, cause unlike speedy kits, i don’t have to think about it. Its like traveler’s on my mesmer.

I usually go 0/6/4/4/0 with Healing Turret/FT/EG/choice, taking kit relevant traits. I use mostly zerker gear with a few soldiers pieces to taste. Fire/Air sigils, which proc off cooldown due to the rapid hits from FT #1. I can spend most of my time in FT, which does lots of damage due to might stacks, Mod ammo (+2-26%), +15% from deadly mixture, +5% while bleeding, and +10% while burning. You also get 3-4 low cooldown blast finishers, stunbreak, condition cleanse, and juggernaut + inventions makes you reasonably beefy.

Its great for tagging mobs and you can decently DPS champions and bosses too.

So, from a FT engi’s perspective, the change to IP is huge. FT is already very trait heavy, with a pretty much mandatory 20 Firearms 20 Alchemy 10 tools (for speedy kits), leaving only 20 points left, all of which would have to be put into explosives to get IP. This means FT engis have to do one of three things
-Give up their last trait selection (IE no HGH, speedy Gadgets, Protective Shield, etc)
-Give up one of their core traits (Juggernaut, speedy kits, deadly mixture)
-Give up incendiary powder.

IP was one of the only things that was making up for FT otherwise lackluster damage. It synergizes well, triggering often because of the rapid attack from Flame Jet and activating the +10% damage to burning foes effect. Without it FT builds take a huge damage hit.

I think the core problem is the inherant weakness of builds that relied on IP without access to it. Like my case with FT, many people use IP to make up for their lower damage outputs (not everyone wants to play full grenades after all). Nerfing every single one of these builds will not increase build diversity. It will simply push more engineers away from new builds into the already popular specs.

If you want to make engis have more build diversity several things need to be addressed.

-Up the damage on builds that required IP. Give FT more flat damage, make Napalm deal damage like lava font, decrease the cooldown on Incendiary Ammo. Boost the effectiveness of pistol autoattack in applying bleeds. Boost the bleed and weakness duration of tranquilizer dart. Make the wrench swing faster. Make rifle hit harder. Don’t make engis rely on either grenades, bomb auto attacks, or 3 kit rotations to deal damage.

-Kits and weapons need to be less trait dependant! Traits that improve, customize, and change the way kits and weapons work, without being mandatory, are great. Forceful Explosives, Steel packed powder, and Elixir infused bombs are all good examples of this. On the other hand, traits like Deadly mixture and grenadier are terrible for build diversity. Without DM, FT and EG damage goes from mediocre to bad. Without grenadier, grenade damage and effectiveness is cut by 1/3. I should not have to trait 30 points just to make grenades not be useless. I should not have to trait 40 points just to make FT not useless. Traits like Grenadier, Deadly Mixture, and rifle mod should be worked into kits baseline and used to open up new trait options.

-With IP moved engis need to have something in their adept explosives line that isn’t useless or niche. A 6 s cripple with a health threshold or a small damage increase isnt going to cut it.

-Lastly Engis need more options than just kits. Turrets as a whole need a complete overhaul. They should function as disposable, powerful, and easily movable area denial. Gadgets could use a boost, particularly Mine, to make them more useful in more situations. Make enemies afraid to deal with an Engi minefield, have them apply cripple and massive damage. Maybe make PBR a highly telegraphed, but very powerful attack. Maybe make googles apply revealed like Sick Em does. Elixirs are in a pretty good place, but C and U could use some tweaks, and R needs more to it than just refilling endurance.

tldr: Moving IP isnt the problem, the problem is that the engineer has terrible damage output in most builds, especially Autoattacks, making this trait almost madatory. Nerfing IP without dealing with the core problem by giving us more options for dealing damage, choosing traits, and using utilities other than kits is a very bad decision.

for condi removal either use cleansing formula 409 in the alchemy tree with some elixirs or slot in healing turret. Rocket boots can also be used as a movement cleanse skill if you run that.

I’m not saying that our downed state is fantastic, but you guys are really over estimating what other classes can do. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_downed_skills#Skills_by_profession

There are two types of downed states: Interrupt (Guardian, Warrior, Ranger, Necro, Engineer) and Escape (Theif, Mesmer, Elementalist)

The only class capable of chaining two interrupts in a row is the engineer. Guardian has a single push, which is better than our grapple because it is AOE, and then they die. Rangers also have an AOE interrupt. They have a higher chance of survival because they can heal faster and use pets. They’re harder to kill than guardians. Warrior has a single interrupt, just like we do. After that they either die or use Vengeance, cause some havoc, and then die. Necros have a single interrupt. They use it and then they die.

Engineers have a single interrupt. Then, if our enemy is slow at stomping, tries to DPS us down, or gets distracted by allies, we have a second one, which is very effective at clearing an area and giving your allies time to help you. Then we die.

Engineers cannot counter stealth stomp. Neither can warriors, Rangers, or Necros. Engineers cannot counter invincibility/stability stomp. Neither can warriors, rangers, necros, or guardians. Engineers cannot counter blind stomp. Neither can warriors, necros, or guardians.

Engineers are just as good, or bad, in their downstate as any of the other 4 interrupt classes. The only one that pulls ahead is Ranger thanks to self rez.

Looking at the other three professions, they have no way to interrupt their opponents, instead they rely on moving themselves to a safer location. In some cases this is more effective (getting back into a keep as an Ele in WvW), in others it is less so (keeping a capture point contested in Spvp as a thief). Either way, all three are better at surviving than the interrupt based classes due to their immunity to Stealth, Stability, Invulnerability, and Blind stomps.

Mine’s kinda wierd
ESDF for running and strafing
Space and 2-5 for weapon skills
Alt for jump
3 mouse buttons for Utility skills
6 for Elite
RTYC for Toolbelt
W for heal
Q for weapon swap
A for auto target
G for interact

If you don’t have many blasts you want to burn on Healing Turret you can always Drop→ Overcharge→ pickup, puts it on a much shorter cooldown so you can use it again quickly.

Superspeed is no different from swiftness out of combat, but in combat it makes you ignore the 30% or so combat speed reduction. You move at out of combat + swiftness speed while in combat, and you can pretty much ignore cripple and chill’s effects.

@xev

I’m actually having trouble running my condition build in WvW anymore cause I don’t have a stunbreaker, and Warrior’s 4s Stun → 100 blades is brutal. Protection Injection and Stabilized armor together go a long way, and 15 tools + elixir gun alone can give you 2 get out of jail free cards. Thankfully I haven’t had to deal with any in tourneys yet.

If you wanna go nuts a fun troll build would be EG + Thumper + Medkit + Slick Shoes for 6 stunbreakers.

Its not so much that Power is inferior, I’ve just found that it doesn’t match well with what you need to survive in sPvP. In dungeons, general pve, even WvW power does very well, but it doesn’t match well with what i need in tourneys.

Your best bet for interrupting a heal is probably overcharge shot or Magnetic inversion, or if you use flamethrower, Air blast. We dont have anything like Doom in terms of instant long range interrupt. Engis in general tend to be very in your face in terms of range.

I’ve not tried running celestial, but I highly doubt it. If you want to try hybrid Condition/Power you might want to try a carrion amulet, but generally going either full Rabid or Berserker is a better choice. You’re welcome to experiment though, you might have some success with it.

I’m not sure what there is with guides, I haven’t used any for a long time and by now, even if i could find them, they’d be out of date :/

What sort of role were you trying to build towards with your Engi? Far Point? Teamfighter? Lockdown? Roamer?

If you have an idea of what role you want to play in a match you can get a better sense of direction for how you want to build.

I’m not sure how effective a power build can be in tpvp, I personally run a condition spec. But I’ll try to give you some advice from a PvP perspective so you can have some more to work with.

I personally use my engi as a far point assaulter in my tPvP team. My goal is to get to the enemy’s back point as quickly as i can and either take it or keep it neutral for as long as possible while my team focuses on back point and center. To do so I focus my build on blinds, blocks, and toughness/ protection to boost my survivability while loading them with conditions.

==CC:
I am pretty sure, but not completely positive, that Magnet on the Toolkit can interrupt blocking enemies. Its a great opener when assaulting a point to pull them off.
Otherwise, there are plenty of other options for cc. Bomb Kit’s big ol bomb is probably the best, its a short cooldown launch, but Overcharge shot on rifle and Magnetic Inversion on shield are also great options. There’s also Personal Battering Ram, but I’m not sure how effective it is to run in a tournament setting.

==Stomp Tricks:
-Use Elixir S and stomp
-Use Elixir S toolbelt for either stealth or stability, then stomp
-Use FT blind for stomp
-drop smokebomb or use Flame Turret for a blindfield, then stomp
-drop smokebomb or use Flame Turret, followed by Magnetic Inversion for 3s stealth, then stomp
-Use big Ol Bomb or overcharge shot to knock them off the point, then let them bleed out.
-Don’t forget that you can rez teammates (or even yourself!) with Elixir R’s toolbelt skill

==Survivability:
-Look into Trait options, Protection Injection, Protective Shield, and Stabilized Armor can all go a long way towards boosting your survivability
-Try Earth or Forge Runes
-Healing Turret with blast finishers can heal for a LOT, while removing conditions
-Elixir Gun #5 is a heal field
-Smoke bomb, Flame Turret, and Static shot for spamming blinds
-Shield and Toolkit together can give you 5 sec straight of blocks
-Rocket boots is an extremely good escape skill if you need to retreat from a fight

==Power vs. Conditions:
I run conditions in TPvP, sorry. I use a FT/EG build in WvW, but it is based on constantly retreating and repositioning and that’s not very useful in Conquest. A guild buddy of mine runs Engi in tPvP as well and he uses Grenades/Bombs in a power build, and it seems to work pretty well for him.

==Shield:
It is possible to run shield in a Power build, generally people tend to do that in a full Grenade build, or possibly with Bombs or even FT/EG. Its kind of hard to justify the loss of burst in a pure power build though.

==Overcharge Shot:
My best recommendation is never using it when you are outnumbered. In a balanced 1v1 or 2v2 setting your opponents suffer more from being CC’d than you. Another option would be to use the Toolbelt on Thumper Turret for 1s of Stability right before you use it, but that would require taking Thumper Turret. :/

==Fun Tricks:
Hmmm, trying to think of some. My favorites are the stealth combos, using smoke fields. The best finishers are probably Rocket boots or Magnetic Inversion. Speaking of rocket boots, be aware it applies the blast finisher for the entire jump, not just at the start or the end.
You can throw Elixir R right before you get downed, and it will rez you.
If you put 15 points into Tools, and run medkit and either Elixir Gun or Slick Shoes, your healing skill and stunbreaker will reset when you hit 25% health. Its a lifesaver.

Not sure what else i can say, if you have any more questions I’ll try to answer them. I definitely recommend looking into condition builds though, Engis are some of the best condition users in the game.

Engis have only three choices: pistol, rifle and shield. Kits will never completely replace your main weapon, even in kit centric builds you switch back to your weapon for situational uses, and other builds focus almost solely on your main weapon.

Do you know yet if you want a condition build or a power build? If you want to go conditions, get a pistol skin. If you want to go power get a rifle. Both can work in WvW.

If you don’t like the giant backpacks, go Asura, they’re relatively small and not very noticeable. Downside to that is so is everything else.

Engineer syndrome is the worst, I have a fully decked out Mesmer alt and I never use her cause its always more fun to play on my engi.

As you level, try and figure out if you want to gravitate towards power or conditions. Both are very viable choices, but there is a pretty big difference in the kind of gear, traits, and combat styles you’ll have between the two. Also, if you do choose conditions, make sure you always have enough access to burn.

I hope you enjoy your new character, Engineer is, in my opinion, the single most fun class in the entire game.

Okay so, Engineer is really cool in that pretty much every single kit can be used in both condition builds or power builds.

Grenades are probably the best damage wise, #2 does 3 stacks of bleed with a very long duration, and you can trait for even more bleeds with Shrapnel in the power line.
You also get the utility from chills and blinds. Nades weakness is that they are hard to use and easy to avoid, so they are great if you can land your hits, but terrible otherwise.

Bombs are also good, the 1 skill does great damage even with somewhat low power, which is good for destroying walls and objects, and firebomb and concussion bomb are great for applying burn and confusion. You also have the utility from the smoke field and cripple field.

Toolkit is excellent, as magnet ==> prybar almost always hits and is your most reliable source of heavy confusion. Box of nails isnt bad either, it hurts melee users and prevents ranged ones from escaping, and with enough +Duration it can keep up a solid 4 bleeds. Plus you get the block and a projectile finisher to use in your smoke or fire fields.

Elixir gun, surprisingly, isnt all that fantastic in condi builds. #1 can stack bleed better than pistols, but only on a single target. The poison is pretty short duration and does very little damage, and the best skill it has, Acid bomb, is not nearly as good as it is in power builds. It does have super elixir and a stunbreak, but you can’t rely on it for damage.

Flamethrower is also not as good as in power builds, but it can have a place in condition builds too. The toolbelt is a very long duration burn, which is useful, and the firefield, PBAOE blind, and low cooldown knockback are all useful to have. Unfortunately, like the elixir gun, its not as useful for damage.

I personally run P/S with Bomb kit, Toolkit, and either Rocketboots or Flame Turret in my condition build, using a Geomancy sigil. Most of my damage comes from confusion and burns, and my defense comes from lots of blinds and blocks.

Whoa that was really impressive! Excellent video as always

Other general new player advice: Make sure your equipment is updated every couple of levels (between 3 and 5 or so) preferable with Green level gear. Make sure you buy some jewelry.

If you are using scepter, make sure you have OH dagger, scepter/focus is very weak offensively and bad at killing things. If you use dagger, either OH focus or OH dagger can work.

Make sure you are cycling attunements and trying not to just auto attack. try and use your blast finishers on your fire fields or water fields (if you have them) for area might and healing. Remember that damage done in attunements is generally Fire>Air>Earth>>>Water, so try and spend most of your time casting your more powerful skills, and avoid things like shatterstone, staff water auto attack, etc and only switch to water when you need the healing or utility.

Rabid Gear is a good option to invest in since it works in about 99% of condition builds. Another good option for power builds is full knights or full soldier’s with berserker trinkets, or full Berserker’s with Cavalier trinkets.

So, a good gear combo I’ve found for mixing damage and survivability is Knights Armor with a mix of Berserker and Valkyrie Trinkets, depending on the crit chance you want. Soldier Armor works too if you run full Berserker Trinkets, you get less toughness and precision that way but more power and vitality. I feel that if you go full defense (no crit damage stats, low power or low precision), you just can’t put out enough damage with Engineer’s relatively weak weapons.

If you want to do conditions, I’d recommend full rabid, which is a great mix of offense and defense. You have the luxury of both being able to take hits well and melt players and creatures down with DOTs in seconds.

For even more tankiness, try either a set of Earth Runes, Forge Runes, or Melandru Runes. Melandru with help you against conditions, and Earth or Forge with proc Protection on you. For extra fun, take protection injection, Stabilized Armor, and either Protective Shield or Armor Mods, for constant damage reduction and/or Aegis.

generally if you doubletap healing turret it heals for about the same as it did prepatch, plus the waterfield lasts much longer. Its almost entirely a straight up buff from before.

whoa okay that was awesome.

I’m not sure why rumble has the 1s stability, since its instant cast, but Well of Power and Stomp got the same thing when they were changed to stunbreaks. the idea is that they can keep the cast animations but make you unable to be interrupted thanks to the stability.

Well, generally I suppose Power/Precision/Crit Damage would be the most important, but toughness, vitality, or both are pretty necessary to ensure that you don’t die.

I generally like to run defensive gear (knights, soldiers) mixed with offensive trinkets (berserkers, valkyrie, or Cavalier) depending on the traitlines i’m speccing in.

@Punkins Rifle can work in condition builds, but only as a swap to weapon for overcharge shot and bleed from blunderbuss. It’s a bit of a waste to lose out on shield and pistol for condition builds, you lose a source of confusion, a blind, 2 blocks, a blast finisher, poison… It just doesn’t seem like a good idea .~.

I guess the idea is to stack it with rifle mod? But there’s so many other traits, both in firearms and otherwise that seem like better picks.

Elixir gun paired with rifle can work pretty well, its what I tend to use the rare times I venture into Dungeons with my friends. Elixir gun hits really hard with Acid Bomb, and Elixir F is not bad damagewise either. Rifle/Elixir gun with some support from elixirs, gadgets, etc is a pretty reliable option, especially paired with healing turret for more AOE healing and group condition removal.

One common build that uses rifles is Static discharge, which usually slots rifle turret (for the toolbelt skill and blast finisher), toolkit, and a 3rd utility of your choosing. Theres lots of room to experiment and customize to suit your playstyle.

I really recommend trying out toolkit while you level, Prybar hits like a truck and the kit has a lot of options for defense, damage, and utility. It also works well paired with Elixir gun (wink wink nudge nudge)

Any Power build can work with a rifle, and most need it. What sort of utilities do you like using? What kits do you like, if any? Do you want rifle as a main weapon or something you switch to out of a kit?

With rifle, unless you’re running with a necro, condition engi, or fighting a boss in PvE, Rifle Mod will always be the better choice over this trait. Even if you ran both at the same time, you’d be giving up the range or the cooldown traits, or the sitting duck trait, all arguably more useful to have than 4-6% increased damage.

@tehdevbot

Haven’t had much time to test FT in WvW today, gadgets keep distracting me. Try looking up Nakoda’s spvp build or Phineas Poe’s PvE build. Those are both great places to start, even though they don’t focus on WvW.

Rocket boots might be a good choice, toolbelt boosts your flamejet damage (+10% while the target is burning), and Rocket Boots are really, really good when you need to close gaps or run away in WvW.

Traitwise, protection injection, protective shield, stabilized armor, and either Forge or Earth runes are great ways to boost your survivability. I’d recommend running Healing Turret for group heals unless you either want to use HGH or if you’ll always be solo. Don’t forget to pick up Deadly Mixture and Juggernaut to boost your damage output.

As much as people hate rng, I think a fun alternative would have been adding chill, weakness, or blind (alone or any combination thereof) as possible procs from rifle and pistol attacks. Much more interesting and useful than a boring, weak, flat damage buff.

As it is now you cant get enough conditions (except maybe on pve bosses) to benefit with rifle, and pistols are for condition builds so why would you even take the trait in the first place?

Yep, its a mesmer trait the mirrors an incoming CC effect back at the attacker (90 sec cooldown). Not many people use it as far as I can tell, mesmers have to give up too much to trait into it.

Softspoken.2410:

It’s basically to ensure that the well cast completes, along with it being a stun breaker.

Warriors’ new Stomp skill does the exact same thing. Its a stunbreaker with a cast time so the stability prevents it from being interrupted.

Slickshoes + rocket boots has become my new favorite combo. You essentially turn yourself into a human bowling ball and just deck everyone in your path. So much fun ^^

Not to mention the escape possbilities in WvW between a 15s cooldown leap and super speed.

Ram toolbelt with is low cooldown is perfect for static discharge builds, and the regular Ram can be used to stunlock people with overcharged shot and slick shoes.

Also, even though rocket boots no longer breaks stuns, it still breaks immobilize, cripple, and chill. Just use super speed —> rocket boots and you can get out of literally anything, so long as you don’t get hit again midair ^^

This is just about the coolest stealth buff ever, and I doubt its unintended.
This means that we finally have at least 1 stunbreaker on each type of skill: kit, elixir, gadget, and turret.

update on 0 kit build playtesting in WvW:
personal battering ram is now a good replacement for rifle turret in a SD build. Rocket boots +slick shoes is just about the most amazing combo ever. Angle yourself right and you can knockdown an entire group in less than a second. Rocket boots + Superspeed + speedy kits means you have a lot of ways to escape, and when zergrunning you can use rocket boots to keep up with the group.

0 kits may not be optimal, but its really fun ^^

Can I just say that the new rocket boots is the sexiest thing ever.
For extra fun run both slick shoes and rocket boots at the same time.

I might even try running a 0 kit build with rocket boots, ram, and slick shoes. It might be gimmicky but its super fun

Edit: also with protection injection and new stabilized armor, I’m wondering if I even need a stunbreak.

Regarding Kits:

Bomb Kit is great in either Condition or Power builds, it gives access to burning (great for shield builds) and confusion, control effects from blinds and Cripples, and a very hard hitting autoattack.

Grenade Kit is great for full on damage, whether power or condition, and also boosts team damage through vulnerability. Its main weakness is that it is hard to use.

Toolkit is fantastic, especially in WvW. Auto attack is decent enough, 2 is useful for running away and hindering your opponent, 3 does MASSIVE damage, both in power and condition builds, 4 is a great anti-burst skill if you start getting focused, and 5 can pull people off of walls. Good stuff.

Elixir Gun might have a weak autoattack, but its still useful. 2 bounces and does pretty decent damage, 3 is weak but can clear up to 5 conditions from your entire team. 4 does incredible amounts of damage, so long as you can keep your opponent in one spot. 5 clears a condition and provides an AOE heal. Really shines in dungeons.

Flamethrower is… well its interesting. Its certainly the most fun kit, visually (who doesn’t like setting people on fire?). 2 is a very strong burst skill, 3 is a projectile reflect and a very very low cooldown push. 4 is a long duration fire field: good for stacking might, bad for everything else. 5 is a PBAOE blind. Some people find this kit useless, others swear by it.

I’d recommend trying out everything. Mess around with them as you level and in the mists, try different combinations and see how you can chain skills together.

Also make sure you are running Shrapnel in Explosives. That’s the main source of bleeds from grenades right there.

Here’s some notable and powerful traits from various lines, (aside from the obvious Speedy Kits). None of them a necessary in every build, like speedy kits tends to be, but most of our builds revolve around at least one of the following traits:

==Static Discharge (tools) fires an bouncing lightning bolt whenever you use a toolbelt skill, for best results use with Toolkit and Rifle Turret.

==HGH (Alchemy) gives you 2 stacks of might whenever you use an elixir, great in elixir heavy builds and paired with Grenades.

==Cleansing Formula 409 (Alchemy) causes elixirs to cure conditions

==Grenadier (Explosives) this is the trait that turns grenades into arguably our highest DPS option. Throw 3 grenades instead of 2.

==Juggernaut (Firearms) Makes flamethrower Tankier and causes it to generate might. Great when paired with Deadly Mixture (Alchemy)

==Coated Bullets (Firearms) Causes Pistol shots to pierce, gives P/P or P/S some much needed AOE capabilities.

Probably not zerker. Generally as an Engie you want to focus on either condition damage or crit damage, not both. I guess it depends on where there are holes in your build. If you run 0 in explosives and feel you need more power, or if you feel you need more health, go with Carrion. If you feel your crit rate is way to low for some reason, you could try Rampager. Otherwise, you can always go for more rabid pieces.

Pistol generally doesn’t benefit from crit damage nearly as much as a rifle does, but if you’re using a rifle you don’t really have much reason to be running rabid gear in the first place.

Hmmm, Automated response is good, Protection Injection and Protective Shield are good, if you use your pistols a lot you could go for increased pistol range. Cloaking device tends to be super helpful in WvW, as well.

Since you’re going conditions, you could also try incendiary powder, gives you more burn. You might not need it though if you run other means for getting burns, like rocket boots or OH pistol.

(Also, completely unrelated to trait points, I run a similar condition build and you might want to try out a Geomancy sigil. They’re dirt cheap and work really well in Melee condition builds like yours)

I personally think adding more toy slot items for costume brawl would be nice. Right now, as far as I know, there’s only the ones you can get with costumes (ie: pan and sword) and the travel ones (drill and broom). I’d like to see more costume brawl options for people so we don’t have to rely on tonics and witch cauldrons.

first, congrats on hitting level 80!

Second, trying my best to help with a couple questions!
first, wvw depends on a lot of factors: server tier (no clue what blackgate is, sorry), time of day, time of week, whos winning or losing, etc as to how many people are on. It wont always be a zergfest and there’s usually opportunities for solo players and groups, (ex: backcapping supply camps, ganking players and dolyaks, and taking unmanned towers.)

Next! I would recommend you get yourself a set of Orrian Temple gear. Orrain armor is Exotic, and costs only karma. Chug your karma bottles from dailies if you haven’t already and grab yourself a few pieces. This is an excellent guide for obtaining it: http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-templegod-karma-armor-sets/

You want to get Rabid gear (Condition Damage, Precision, Toughness). Rabid gear is a great combination of damage and survivability, and can be used on a variety of builds that focus on condition damage. Rabid Gear builds fall a little short in dungeons, but in PvP and WvW they can be absolutely devastating (Be careful though, not all the gear sold at each temple has the same stat combinations.)

Best part about the Temple gear? It has the armor skin you want from character creation! No need to even worry about transmutation stones!

regarding builds, as an engineer you can get by with most builds with just two sets of armor, one knight/berserker/soldier set for direct damage builds, and one rabid/carrion set for condition damage builds.

Other things. You wont be forced into dungeons. You can do them if you enjoy them and want to do them. Its your choice. If you don’t like the dungeons there’s other things to do.

Ways to make money. WvW can give decent money but its nothing fantastic. Sell your loot bags on Trading post and that will give you a decent income. Otherwise, exploring and running event chains in cursed shore is a pretty good income source. (Plus event chains will help you get the karma you need to complete your armor set.) Make sure to mine and cut every resourse node. Sell your mats on the trading post. Some dungeons are good for making money but that takes a group, time, and gear.

Anyways, good luck, and have fun c:

Hammers and dual shields would be cool, but I’m gonna have to second torches. Why? Because of Combustion: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/a/a7/Combustion.jpg

This is one of the most awesome engi looking weapons in the game and we can’t even use it!

Engies may not be good at running away, but we’re not slow. Medkit alone can give 50%+ swiftness uptime, and with speedy kits its insane how much swiftness we can stack. Otherwise, Elixir B, plus toss B, plus Elixir H used on cooldown has pretty good swiftness uptime (though it is partially RNG based).

Hardly anyone uses it because speedy kits is better, but Power Shoes (Master inventions) is pretty good combat mobility, with the downside of being slow out of combat.

Lastly you can use centaur runes, the mesmer workaround, which you can use with any heal, though medkit or turret is the best for it.

We don’t have many gap closers, but we do have an absurd amount of control. Traited Wrench cripple, Net shot, net turret, magnet, freeze grenade, glue shot/bomb, throw mine, etc are all fantastic at keeping an enemy from getting away.

Here’s my Engi, PVP on the left and PVE on the right. I’m particularly proud of the terrible sneakers look on the PVE set.

it only does a burn if the target is already burning (I.e., it extends burning rather than applying it)

I don’t do dungeons very often, but I always have EG on my bar when I do. Super elixir is useful, especially combined with healing turret regen. Fumigate, while you don’t want to use it offensively, is one of the best group condition cleanses in the entire game, and can be used to remove long duration burns, cripples, etc from your team. Acid Bomb is also fantastic, it hits really really hard in an AOE, provided your target stands still (though that tends not to be difficult for NPC enemies).

EG is also useful WvW for the range, group support, and an escape with Acid Bomb.

Healing turret is great, but it is much less mobile than medkit. If you detonate it about a second after dropping it does an AOE heal. You can do the same thing with a blast finisher like magnetic inversion by using it right after using healing turret’s f1 ability.

If you trait into explosives for accelerant packet turrets, you also get a free knockback every time you heal!

Gearwise, Rabid or Carrion are pretty good mixtures of offense and defense, it really comes down to the details of your build as to which one is better (do you use crit procs like earth sigil or incendiary powder? Do you have a power based kit auto attack you like to use? how much fury access do you have? etc). Using Rampagers is comparable to using berserker’s: you’ll die very quickly if you get hit.

I personally use a full set of rabid armor, a decent amount of points in alchemy, and toughness runes (Engineer, saving up for guardian). This gives me a lot of survivability, while still letting me keep up a lot of condition damage.

Another good rune set is altruism, which turns every single heal into “For Great Justice”. Engineers have an advantage with this rune because medkit has no cooldown, so we can use altruism whenever the internal cooldown ends.

With your elite, definitely choose supply crate. It is much stronger than either of our alternatives offensively, and it stuns, and it drops health packs!

Also consider looking into elixir gun if you’re leaning towards a support role. EG 3 clears 5 conditions from allies you hit, EG 4 is a blast finisher and and AOE attack, and EG 5 is an AOE heal.

Though its kinda dangerous to use it, (you tend to aggro pretty much everything), my static discharge variant works really well in events and map exploration. I use rifle, medkit, Toolkit, Elixirgun, and rifle turret. Static discharge, combined with rifle pierce, acid bomb/ Elixir F from EG, and a fire sigil absolutely destroys groups of mobs, and is generally fun to play.

When I don’t feel like respeccing I sometimes use my WvW build as well, which is a bomb/toolkit confusion spam build. It works pretty well, but it isn’t nearly as strong against monsters as it is against players.

I used a FT/EG build in pve last month, but It really feels lackluster now that they’ve fixed double pop.